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I VE KEPT MY EARS OPEN TO ALL YOUR DOINGS 


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STOLEN 

TREASURE 


, AUTHOR OF 

“men of iron” “twilight land” 

THE WONDER CLOCK” “ PEPPER AND SALT 


«>MTCt 

MilAXOTXlM 


NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

M C M V I I 






library of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

MAY 9 '907 

k Copynght 

ytpx. /v./fo7 

CLASS Wjc*’ J[f®* 

COPY B. I 


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Copyright, 1907, by Harper & Brothers. 


Ali rights reserved. 
Published May, 1907. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. With the Buccaneers 3 

II. Tom Chist and the Treasure-Box ... 45 

III. The Ghost of Captain Brand 96 

IV. The Devil at New Hope 179 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


“I’VE KEPT MY EARS OPEN TO ALL YOUR 

doings’” 

‘this figure of war our hero ASKED TO 

STEP ASIDE WITH HIM ” 

‘our HERO, LEAPING TO THE WHEEL, SEIZED 

THE FLYING SPOKES ” 

‘she and master harry would SPEND 

HOURS together” 

. AND TWENTY-ONE AND TWENTY-TWO ’ ” 
“’tIS enough,’ cried out parson JONES, 

‘to make us both rich men’” . . . 

‘captain malyoe shot captain brand 

THROUGH THE HEAD” 

‘he would shout opprobrious words 

AFTER THE OTHER IN THE STREETS”. . 


Frontispiece 




Facing p. 




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6 ^ 

36 ^ 

40 *’^ 

S(>y 

82X 

102-^ 

184 









WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


j 



STOLEN TREASURE 


I 

WITH THE BUCCANEERS 

Being an Account of Certain Adventures that 
Befell Henry Mostyn under Captain H. Mor- 
gan in the Year i66j-66. 

I 

ALTHOUGH this narration has more par- 
i^ticularly to do with the taking of the 
Spanish Vice-Admiral in the harbor of Puerto 
Bello, and of the rescue therefrom of Le Sieur 
Simon, his wife and daughter (the adventure 
of which was successfully achieved by Captain 
Morgan, the famous buccaneer), we shall, never- 
theless, premise something of the earlier history 
of Master Harry Mostyn, whom you may, if 
you please, consider as the hero of the several 
circumstances recounted in these pages. 

In the year 1664 our hero’s father embarked 
3 


STOLEN TREASURE 


from Portsmouth, in England, for the Barba- 
does, where he owned a considerable sugar 
plantation. Thither to those parts of America 
he transported with himself his whole family, of 
whom our Master Harry was the fifth of eight 
' children — a great lusty fellow as little fitted for 
the Church (for which he was designed) as 
could be. At the time of this story, though not 
above sixteen years old. Master Harry Mostyn 
was as big and well-grown as many a man of 
twenty, and of such a reckless and dare-devil 
spirit that no adventure was too dangerous or 
too mischievous for him to embark upon. 

At this time there was a deal of talk in those 
parts of the Americas concerning Captain Mor- 
gan, and the prodigious successes he was having 
pirating against the Spaniards. 

This man had once been an indentured ser- 
vant with Mr. Rolls, a sugar factor at the 
Barbadoes. Having served out his time, and 
being of lawless disposition, possessing also a 
prodigious appetite for adventure, he joined 
with others of his kidney, and, purchasing a 
caraval of three guns, embarked fairly upon 
that career of piracy the most successful that 
ever was heard of in the world. 


4 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


Master Harry had known this man very well 
while he was still with Mr. Rolls, serving as a 
clerk at that gentleman’s sugar wharf, a tall, 
broad-shouldered, strapping fellow, with red 
cheeks, and thick red lips, and rolling blue 
eyes, and hair as red as any chestnut. Many 
knew him for a bold, gruff-spoken man, but no 
one at that time suspected that he had it in 
him to become so famous and renowned as he 
afterwards grew to be. 

The fame of his exploits had been the talk 
of those parts for above a twelvemonth, when, 
in the latter part of the year 1665, Captain 
Morgan, having made a very successful ex- 
pedition against the Spaniards into the Gulf 
of Campeachy — where he took several important 
purchases from the plate fleet — came to the 
Barbadoes, there to fit out another such venture, 
and to enlist recruits. 

He and certain other adventurers had pur- 
chased a vessel of some five hundred tons, which 
they proposed to convert into a pirate by cut- 
ting port-holes for cannon, and running three 
or four carronades across her main-deck. The 
name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the 
Good Samaritan, as ill-fitting a name as could 
5 


STOLEN TREASURE 


be for such a craft, which, instead of being 
designed for the healing of wounds, was in- 
tended to inflict such devastation as those 
wicked men proposed. 

Here was a piece of mischief exactly fitted to 
our hero’s tastes; wherefore, having made up 
a bundle of clothes, and with not above a shil- 
ling in his pocket, he made an excursion into 
the town to seek for Captain Morgan. There 
he found the great pirate established at an 
ordinary, with a little court of ragamuffins 
and swashbucklers gathered about him, all 
talking very loud, and drinking healths in raw 
rum as though it were sugared water. 

And what a fine figure our buccaneer had 
grown, to be sure! How different from the 
poor, humble clerk upon the sugarwharf 1 What 
a deal of gold braid! What a fine, silver- 
hilted Spanish sword ! What a gay velvet sling, 
hung with three silver-mounted pistols! If 
Master Harry’s mind had not been made up 
before, to be sure such a spectacle of glory would 
have determined it. 

This figure of war our hero asked to step 
aside with him, and when they had come into 
a corner, proposed to the other what he in- 
6 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


tended, and that he had a mind to enlist as a 
gentleman adventurer upon this expedition. 
Upon this our rogue of a buccaneer Captain 
burst out a-laughing, and fetching Master Harry 
a great thump upon the back, swore roundly 
that he would make a man of him, and that it 
was a pity to make a parson out of so good a 
piece of stuff. 

Nor was Captain Morgan less good than his 
word, for when the Good Samaritan set sail 
with a favoring wind for the island of Jamaica, 
Master Harry found himself established as 
one of the adventurers aboard. 


II 

Could you but have seen the town of Port 
Royal as it appeared in the year 1665 you 
would have beheld a sight very well worth 
while looking upon. There were no fine houses 
at that time, and no great counting-houses built 
of brick, such as you may find nowadays, but 
a crowd of board and wattled huts huddled 
along the streets, and all so gay with flags and 
bits of color that Vanity Fair itself could not 
7 


STOLEN TREASURE 


have been gayer. To this place came all the 
pirates and buccaneers that infested those 
parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, 
and poured out money like water, and then 
maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying 
of fever. For the sky in these torrid latitudes 
is all full of clouds overhead, and as hot as any 
blanket, and when the sun shone forth it 
streamed down upon the smoking sands so that 
the houses were ovens and the streets were fur- 
naces; so it w^as little wonder that men died 
like rats in a hole. But little they appeared to 
care for that; so that everywhere you might 
behold a multitude of painted women and Jews 
and merchants and pirates, gaudy with red 
scarfs and gold braid and all sorts of odds and 
ends of foolish finery, all fighting and gambling 
and bartering for that ill-gotten treasure of the 
be-robbed Spaniard. 

Here, arriving. Captain Morgan found a 
hearty welcome, and a message from the 
Governor awaiting him, the message bidding 
him attend his Excellency upon the earliest 
occasion that offered. Whereupon, taking our 
hero (of whom he had grown prodigiously fond) 
along with him, our pirate went, without any 
8 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


loss of time, to visit Sir Thomas Modiford, who 
was then the royal Governor of all this devil’s 
brew of wickedness. 

They found his Excellency seated in a great 
easy - chair, under the shadow of a slatted 
veranda, the floor whereof was paved with 
brick. He was clad, for the sake of coolness, 
only in his shirt, breeches, and stockings, and 
he wore slippers on his feet. He was smoking 
a great cigarro of tobacco, and a goblet of lime- 
juice and water and rum stood at his elbow on 
a table. Here, out of the glare of the heat, 
it was all very cool and pleasant, with a sea- 
breeze blowing violently in through the slats, 
setting them a-rattling now and then, and stir- 
ring Sir Thomas’s long hair, which he had 
pushed back for the sake of coolness. 

The purport of this interview, I may tell you, 
concerned the rescue of one Le Sieur Simon, 
who, together with his wife and daughter, was 
held captive by the Spaniards. 

This gentleman adventurer (Le Sieur Simon) 
had, a few years before, been set up by the 
buccaneers as Governor of the island of Santa 
Catherina. This place, though well fortified 
by the Spaniards, the buccaneers had seized 
9 


STOLEN TREASURE 


upon, establishing themselves thereon, and so 
infesting the commerce of those seas that no 
Spanish fleet was safe from them. At last the 
Spaniards, no longer able to endure these as- 
saults against their commerce, sent a great 
force against the freebooters to drive them 
out of their island stronghold. This they did, 
retaking Santa Catherina, together with its 
Governor, his wife, and daughter, as well as the 
whole garrison of buccaneers. 

This garrison were sent by their conquerors, 
some to the galleys, some to the mines, some 
to no man knows where. The Governor him- 
self — Le Sieur Simon — ^was to be sent to Spain, 
there to stand his trial for piracy. 

The news of all this, I may tell you, had only 
just been received in Jamaica, having been 
brought thither by a Spanish captain, one Don 
Roderiguez Sylvia, who was, besides, the bearer 
of despatches to the Spanish authorities re- 
lating the whole affair. 

Such, in fine, was the purport of this inter- 
view, and as our hero and his Captain walked 
back together from the Governor’s house to the 
ordinary where they had taken up their inn, 
the buccaneer assured his companion that he 

lO 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


purposed to obtain those despatches from the 
Spanish captain that very afternoon, even if he 
had to use force to seize them. 

All this, you are to understand, was under- 
taken only because of the friendship that the 
Governor and Captain Morgan entertained for 
Le Sieur Simon. And, indeed, it was wonderful 
how honest and how faithful were these wicked 
men in their dealings with one another. For 
you must know that Governor Modiford and Le 
Sieur Simon and the buccaneers were all of one 
kidney — all taking a share in the piracies of 
those times, and all holding by one another as 
though they were the honestest men in the 
world. Hence it was they were all so deter- 
mined to rescue Le Sieur Simon from the 
Spaniards. 


Ill 

Having reached his ordinary after his inter- 
view with the Governor, Captain Morgan found 
there a number of his companions, such as 
usually gathered at that place to be in attend- 
ance upon him — some, those belonging to the 
Good Samaritan; others, those who hoped to 


STOLEN TREASURE 


obtain benefits from him; others, those raga- 
mufiins who gathered around him because he 
was famous, and because it pleased them to be 
of his court and to be called his followers. For 
nearly always your successful pirate had such a 
little court surrounding him. 

Finding a dozen or more of these rascals 
gathered there. Captain Morgan informed them 
of his present purpose — that he was going to 
find the Spanish captain to demand his papers 
of him, and calling upon them to accompany 
him. 

With this following at his heels, our buc- 
caneer started off down the street, his lieuten- 
ant, a Cornishman named Bartholomew Davis, 
upon one hand and our hero upon the other. 
So they paraded the streets for the best part of 
an hour before they foimd the Spanish captain. 
For whether he had got wind that Captain 
Morgan was searching for him, or whether, find- 
ing himself in a place so full of his enemies, he 
had buried himself in some place of hiding, it is 
certain that the buccaneers had traversed pretty 
nearly the whole town before they discovered 
that he was lying at a certain auberge kept by 
a Portuguese Jew. Thither they went, and 


12 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


thither Captain Morgan entered with the ut- 
most coolness and composure of demeanor, his 
followers crowding noisily in at his heels. 

The space within was very dark, being lighted 
only by the doorway and by two large slatted 
windows or openings in the front. 

In this dark, hot place — not over-roomy at 
the best — were gathered twelve or fifteen villan- 
ous-appearing men, sitting at tables and drink- 
ing together, waited upon by the Jew and his 
wife. Our hero had no trouble in discovering 
which of this lot of men was Captain Sylvia, 
for not only did Captain Morgan direct his 
glance full of war upon him, but the Spaniard 
was clad with more particularity and with more 
show of finery than any of the others who were 
there. 

Him Captain Morgan approached and de- 
manded his papers, whereunto the other re- 
plied with such a jabber of Spanish and English 
that no man could have understood what he 
said. To this Captain Morgan in turn replied 
that he must have those papers, no matter what 
it might cost him to obtain them, and there- 
upon drew a pistol from his sling and presented 
it at the other’s head. 


13 


STOLEN TREASURE 


At this threatening action the innkeeper’s 
wife fell a-screaming, and the Jew, as in a frenzy, 
besought them not to tear the house down about 
his ears. 

Our hero could hardly tell what followed, only 
that all of a sudden there was a prodigious up- 
roar of combat. Knives flashed everywhere, 
and then a pistol was fired so close to his head 
that he stood like one stunned, hearing some one 
crying out in a loud voice, but not knowing 
whether it was a friend or a foe who had been 
shot. Then another pistol-shot so deafened 
what was left of Master Harry’s hearing that 
his ears rang for above an hour afterwards. 
By this time the whole place was full of gun- 
powder smoke, and there was the sound of 
blows and oaths and outcrying and the clash- 
ing of knives. 

As Master Harry, who had no great stomach 
for such a combat, and no very particular in- 
terest in the quarrel, was making for the door, 
a little Portuguese, as withered and as nimble 
as an ape, came ducking under the table and 
plunged at his stomach with a great long knife, 
which, had it effected its object, would surely 
have ended his adventures then and there. 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


Finding himself in such danger, Master Harry 
snatched up a heavy chair, and, flinging it at 
his enemy, who was preparing for another at- 
tack, he fairly ran for it out of the door, expect- 
ing every instant to feel the thrust of the blade 
betwixt his ribs. 

A considerable crowd had gathered outside, 
and others, hearing the uproar, were coming 
running to join them. With these our hero 
stood, trembling like a leaf, and with cold chills 
running up and down his back like water at the 
narrow escape from the danger that had threat- 
ened him. 

Nor shall you think him a coward, for you 
must remember he was hardly sixteen years 
old at the time, and that this was the first 
affair of the sort he had encountered. After- 
wards, as you shall learn, he showed that he 
could exhibit courage enough at a pinch. 

While he stood there endeavoring to recover 
his composure, the while the tumult continued 
within, suddenly two men came running almost 
together out of the door, a crowd of the com- 
batants at their heels. The first of these men 
v/as Captain Sylvia; the other, who was pur- 
suing him, was Captain Morgan. 

IS 


STOLEN TREASURE 


As the crowd about the door parted before 
the sudden appearing of these, the Spanish 
captain, perceiving, as he supposed, a way of 
escape opened to him, darted across the street 
with incredible swiftness towards an alleyway 
upon the other side. Upon this, seeing his 
prey like to get away from him, Captain Morgan 
snatched a pistol out of his sling, and resting 
it for an instant across his arm, fired at the fly- 
ing Spaniard, and that with so true an aim that, 
though the street was now full of people, the 
other went tumbling over and over all of a heap 
in the kennel, where he lay, after a twitch or 
two, as still as a log. 

At the sound of the shot and the fall of the 
man the crowd scattered upon all sides, yelling 
and screaming, and the street being thus pretty 
clear. Captain Morgan ran across the way to 
where his victim lay, his smoking pistol still in 
his hand, and our hero following close at his 
heels. 

Our poor Harry had never before beheld a 
man killed thus in an instant who a moment 
before had been so full of life and activity, for 
when Captain Morgan turned the body over 
upon its back he could perceive at a glance, 

i6 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


little as he knew of such matters, that the man 
was stone dead. And, indeed, it was a dreadful 
sight for him who was hardly more than a child. 
He stood rooted for he knew not how long, 
staring down at the dead face with twitching 
fingers and shuddering limbs. Meantime a 
great crowd was gathering about them again. 

As for Captain Morgan, he went about his 
work with the utmost coolness and deliberation 
imaginable, unbuttoning the waistcoat and the 
shirt of the man he had murdered with fingers 
that neither twitched nor shook. There were 
a gold cross and a bunch of silver medals hung 
by a whip-cord about the neck of the dead 
man. This Captain Morgan broke away with 
a snap, reaching the jingling baubles to Harry, 
who took them in his nerveless hand and fingers 
that he could hardly close upon what they held. 

The papers Captain Morgan found in a wal- 
let in an inner breast-pocket of the Spaniard’s 
waistcoat. These he examined one by one, and 
finding them to his satisfaction, tied them up 
again, and slipped the wallet and its contents 
into his own pocket. 

Then for the first time he appeared to observe 
Master Harry, who, indeed, must have been 
2 17 


STOLEN TREASURE 


standing the perfect picture of horror and dis- 
may. Whereupon, bursting out a-laughing, and 
slipping the pistol he had used back into its 
sling again, he fetched poor Harry a great slap 
upon the back, bidding him be a man, for that 
he would see many such sights as this. 

But, indeed, it was no laughing matter for 
poor Master Harry, for it was many a day 
before his imagination could rid itself of the 
image of the dead Spaniard’s face; and as he 
walked away down the street with his compan- 
ions, leaving the crowd behind them, and the 
dead body where it lay for its friends to look 
after, his ears humming and ringing from the 
deafening noise of the pistol-shots fired in the 
close room, and the sweat trickling down his 
face in drops, he knew not whether all that had 
passed had been real, or whether it was a dream 
from which he might presently awaken. 


IV 

The papers Captain Morgan had thus seized 
upon as the fruit of the murder he had com- 
mitted must have been as perfectly satisfactory 

i8 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


to him as could be, for having paid a second 
visit that evening to Governor Modiford, the 
pirate lifted anchor the next morning and made 
sail towards the Gulf of Darien. There, after 
cruising about in those waters for about a 
fortnight without falling in with a vessel of any 
sort, at the end of that time they overhauled a 
caravel bound from Puerto Bello to Cartagena, 
which vessel they took, and finding her loaded 
with nothing better than raw hides, scuttled 
and sunk her, being then about twenty leagues 
from the main of Cartagena. From the captain 
of this vessel they learned that the plate fleet 
was then lying in the harbor of Puerto Bello, 
not yet having set sail thence, but waiting for 
the change of the winds before embarking for 
Spain. Besides this, which was a good deal 
more to their purpose, the Spaniards told the 
pirates that the Sieur Simon, his wife, and 
daughter were confined aboard the vice-admiral 
of that fleet, and that the name of the vice- 
admiral was the Santa Maria y Valladolid, 

So soon as Captain Morgan had obtained the 
information he desired he directed his course 
straight for the Bay of Santo Blaso, where he 
might lie safely within the cape of that name 

19 


STOLEN TREASURE 


without any danger of discovery (that part of 
the main-land being entirely uninhabited) and 
yet be within twenty or twenty-five leagues of 
Puerto Bello. 

Having come safely to this anchorage, he at 
once declared his intentions to his companions, 
which were as follows: 

That it was entirely impossible for them to 
hope to sail their vessel into the harbor of Puerto 
Bello, and to attack the Spanish vice - admiral 
where he lay in the midst of the armed flota; 
wherefore, if anything was to be accomplished, 
it must be undertaken by some subtle design 
rather than by open-handed boldness. Having 
so prefaced what he had to say, he now declared 
that it was his purpose to take one of the ship’s 
boats and to go in that to Puerto Bello, trusting 
for some opportunity to occur to aid him either 
in the accomplishment of his aims or in the 
gaining of some further information. Having 
thus delivered himself, he invited any who dared 
to do so to volunteer for the expedition, telling 
them plainly that he would constrain no man 
to go against his will, for that at best it was a 
desperate enterprise, possessing only the rec- 
ommendation that in its achievement the few 


20 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


who undertook it would gain great renown, and 
perhaps a very considerable booty. 

And such was the incredible influence of this 
bold man over his companions, and such was 
their confidence in his skill and cunning, that 
not above a dozen of all those aboard htmg back 
from the undertaking, but nearly every man 
desired to be taken. 

Of these volunteers Captain Morgan chose 
twenty — among others our Master Harry — and 
having arranged with his lieutenant that if noth- 
ing was heard from the expedition at the end 
of three days he should sail for Jamaica to 
await news, he embarked upon that enterprise, 
which, though never heretofore published, was 
perhaps the boldest and the most desperate of 
all those that have since made his name so 
famous. For what could be a more unparalleled 
undertaking than for a little open boat, con- 
taining but twenty men, to enter the harbor of 
the third strongest fortress of the Spanish main- 
land with the intention of cutting out the Span- 
ish vice-admiral from the midst of a whole fleet 
of powerfully armed vessels, and how many men 
in all the world do you suppose would venture 
such a thing ? 


21 


STOLEN TREASURE 


But there is this to be said of that great 
buccaneer: that if he undertook enterprises so 
desperate as this, he yet laid his plans so well 
that they never went altogether amiss. More- 
over, the very desperation of his successes was 
of such a nature that no man could suspect that 
he would dare to undertake such things, and 
accordingly his enemies were never prepared to 
guard against his attacks. Aye, had he but 
worn the King’s colors and served under the 
rules of honest war, he might have become as 
great and as renowned as Admiral Blake 
himself! 

But all that is neither here nor there ; what 
I have to tell you now is that Captain Mor- 
gan in this open boat with his twenty mates 
reached the Cape of Salmedina towards the 
fall of day. Arriving within view of the harbor 
they discovered the plate fleet at anchor, with 
two men-of-war and an armed galley riding as a 
guard at the mouth of the harbor, scarce half a 
league distant from the other ships. Having 
spied the fleet in this posture, the pirates pres- 
ently pulled down their sails and rowed along 
the coast, feigning to be a Spanish vessel from 
Nombre de Dios. So hugging the shore, they 
22 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 

came boldly within the harbor, upon the op- 
posite side of which you might see the fortress 
a considerable distance aw^'ay. 

Being now come so near to the consummation 
of their adventure, Captain Morgan required 
every man to make an oath to stand by him to 
the last, whereunto our hero swore as heartily 
as any man aboard, although his heart, I must 
needs confess, was beating at a great rate at the 
approach of what was to happen. Having thus 
received the oaths of all his followers. Captain 
Morgan commanded the surgeon of the ex- 
pedition that, when the order was given, he, 
the medico, was to bore six holes in the boat, so 
that, it sinking under them, they might all be 
compelled to push forward, with no chance of 
retreat. And such was the ascendency of this 
man over his followers, and such was their awe 
of him, that not one of them uttered even so 
much as a murmur, though what he had com- 
manded the surgeon to do pledged them either 
to victory or to death, with no chance to choose 
between. Nor did the surgeon question the 
orders he had received, much less did he dream 
of disobeying them. 

By now it had fallen pretty dusk, whereupon, 
23 


STOLEN TREASURE 


spying two fishermen in a canoe at a little dis- 
tance, Captain Morgan demanded of them in 
Spanish which vessel of those at anchor in the 
harbor was the vice-admiral, for that he had 
despatches for the captain thereof. Whereupon 
the fishermen, suspecting nothing, pointed to 
them a galleon of great size riding at anchor 
not half a league distant. 

Towards this vessel accordingly the pirates 
directed their course, and when they had come 
pretty nigh. Captain Morgan called upon the 
surgeon that now it was time for him to perform 
the duty that had been laid upon him. Where- 
upon the other did as he was ordered, and that 
so thoroughly that the water presently came 
gushing into the boat in great streams, whereat 
all hands pulled for the galleon as though every 
next moment was to be their last. 

And what do you suppose were our hero’s 
emotions at this time? Like all in the boat, 
his awe of Captain Morgan was so great that I 
do believe he would rather have gone to the 
bottom than have questioned his command, 
even when it was to scuttle the boat. Never- 
theless, when he felt the cold water gushing 
about his feet (for he had taken off his shoes 
24 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


and stockings) he became possessed with such 
a fear of being drowned that even the Spanish 
galleon had no terrors for him if he could only 
feel the solid planks thereof beneath his feet. 

Indeed, all the crew appeared to be possessed 
of a like dismay, for they pulled at the oars with 
such an incredible force that they were under 
the quarter of the galleon before the boat was 
half filled with water. 

Here, as they approached, it then being pretty 
dark and the moon not yet having risen, the 
watch upon the deck hailed them, whereupon 
Captain Morgan called out in Spanish that he 
was Captain Alvarez Mendazo, and that he 
brought despatches for the vice-admiral. 

But at that moment, the boat being now so 
full of water as to be logged, it suddenly tilted 
upon one side as though to sink beneath them, 
whereupon all hands, without further orders, 
went scrambling up the side, as nimble as so 
many monkeys, each armed with a pistol in one 
hand and a cutlass in the other, and so were 
upon deck before the watch could collect his 
wits to utter any outcry or to give any other 
alarm than to cry out, “ Jesu bless us! who are 
these?” at which words somebody knocked him 

25 


STOLEN TREASURE 


down with the butt of a pistol, though who it 
was our hero could not tell in the darkness 
and the hurry. 

Before any of those upon deck could recover 
from their alarm or those from below come up 
upon deck, a part of the pirates, under the car- 
penter and the surgeon, had run to the gun- 
room and had taken possession of the arms, 
while Captain Morgan, with Master Harry and 
a Portuguese called Murillo Braziliano, had 
flown with the speed of the wind into the great 
cabin. 

Here they found the captain of the vice- 
admiral playing at cards with the Sieur Simon 
and a friend. Madam Simon and her daughter 
being present. 

Captain Morgan instantly set his pistol at 
the breast of the Spanish captain, swearing 
with a most horrible fierce countenance that 
if he spake a word or made any outcry he was 
a dead man. As for our hero, having now got 
his hand into the game, he performed the same 
service for the Spaniard’s friend, declaring he 
would shoot him dead if he opened his lips or 
lifted so much as a single finger. 

All this while the ladies, not comprehending 
26 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


what had occurred, had sat as mute as stones; 
but now having so far recovered themselves as 
to find a voice, the younger of the two fell to 
screaming, at which the Sieur Simon called out 
to her to be still, for these were friends who had 
come to help them, and not enemies who had 
come to harm them. 

All this, you are to understand, occupied only 
a little while, for in less than a minute three or 
four of the pirates had come into the cabin, 
who, together with the Portuguese, proceeded 
at once to bind the two Spaniards hand and 
foot, and to gag them. This being done to our 
buccaneer’s satisfaction, and the Spanish cap- 
tain being stretched out in the corner of the 
cabin, he instantly cleared his countenance of its 
terrors, and bursting forth into a great loud 
laugh, clapped his hand to the Sieur Simon’s, 
which he wrung with the best will in the world. 
Having done this, and being in a fine humor 
after this his first success, he turned to the two 
ladies. “And this, ladies,” said he, taking our 
hero by the hand and presenting him, “is a 
young gentleman who has embarked with me 
to learn the trade of piracy. I recommend him 
to your politeness.” 


27 


STOLEN TREASURE 

Think what a confusion this threw our Master 
Harry into, to be sure, who at his best was never 
easy in the company of strange ladies! You 
may suppose what must have been his emotions 
to find himself thus introduced to the attention 
of Madam Simon and her daughter, being at the 
time in his bare feet, clad only in his shirt and 
breeches, and with no hat upon his head, a pistol 
in one hand and a cutlass in the other. How- 
ever, he was not left for long to his embarrass- 
ments, for almost immediately after he had thus 
far relaxed. Captain Morgan fell of a sudden 
serious again, and bidding the Sieur Simon to 
get his ladies away into some place of safety, 
for the most hazardous part of this adventure 
was yet to occur, he quitted the cabin with 
Master Harry and the other pirates (for you 
may call him a pirate now) at his heels. 

Having come upon deck, our hero beheld that 
a part of the Spanish crew were huddled forward 
in a flock like so many sheep (the others being 
crowded below with the hatches fastened upon 
them), and such was the terror of the pirates, 
and so dreadful the name of Henry Morgan, 
that not one of those poor wretches dared 
to lift up his voice to give any alarm, nor 
28 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 

even to attempt an escape by jumping over- 
board. 

At Captain Morgan’s orders, these men, to- 
gether with certain of his own company, ran 
nimbly aloft and began setting the sails, which, 
the night now having fallen pretty thick, was 
not for a good while observed by any of the 
vessels riding at anchor about them. 

Indeed, the pirates might have made good 
their escape, with at most only a shot or two 
from the men-of-war, had it not then been about 
the full of the moon, which, having arisen, pres- 
ently discovered to those of the fleet that lay 
closest about them what was being done aboard 
the vice-admiral. 

At this one of the vessels hailed them, and 
then after a while, having no reply, hailed them 
again. Even then the Spaniards might not 
immediately have suspected anything was amiss 
but only that the vice-admiral for some reason 
best known to himself was shifting his anchor- 
age, had not one of the Spaniards aloft — but 
who it was Captain Morgan was never able to 
discover — answered the hail by crying out that 
the vice-admiral had been seized by the pirates. 

At this the alarm was instantly given and the 
29 


STOLEN TREASURE 


mischief done, for presently there was a tre- 
mendous bustle through that part of the fleet 
lying nighest the vice-admiral — a deal of shout- 
ing of orders, a beating of drums, and the run- 
ning hither and thither of the crews. 

But by this time the sails of the vice-admiral 
had filled with a strong land breeze that was 
blowing up the harbor, whereupon the car- 
penter, at Captain Morgan’s orders, having cut 
away both anchors, the galleon presently bore 
away up the harbor, gathering headway every 
moment with the wind nearly dead astern. 
The nearest vessel was the only one that for the 
moment was able to offer any hinderance. This 
ship, having by this time cleared away one of its 
guns, was able to fire a parting shot against the 
vice-admiral, striking her somewhere forward, 
as our hero could see by a great shower of 
splinters that flew up in the moonlight. 

At the sound of the shot all the vessels of the 
flota not yet disturbed by the alarm were aroused 
at once, so that the pirates had the satisfaction 
of knowing that they would have to run the 
gantlet of all the ships between them and the 
open sea before they could reckon themselves 
escaped. 


30 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


And, indeed, to our hero’s mind it seemed that 
the battle which followed must have been the 
most terrific cannonade that was ever heard in 
the world. It was not so ill at first, for it was 
some while before the Spaniards could get their 
guns clear for action, they being not the least in 
the world prepared for such an occasion as this. 
But by-and-by first one and then another ship 
opened fire upon the galleon, until it seemed to 
our hero that all the thunders of heaven let 
loose upon them could not have created a more 
prodigious uproar, and that it was not possible 
that they could any of them escape destruc- 
tion. 

By now the moon had risen full and round, so 
that the clouds of smoke that rose in the air 
appeared as white as snow. The air seemed 
full of the hiss and screaming of shot, each one 
of which, when it struck the galleon, was 
magnified by our hero’s imagination into ten 
times its magnitude from the crash which it de- 
livered and from the cloud of splinters it would 
cast up into the moonlight. At last he suddenly 
beheld one poor man knocked sprawling across 
the deck, who, as he raised his arm from be- 
hind the mast, disclosed that the hand was 

31 


STOLEN TREASURE 


gone from it, and that the shirt-sleeve was red 
with blood in the moonlight. At this sight all 
the strength fell away from poor Harry, and 
he felt sure that a like fate or even a worse must 
be in store for him. 

But, after all, this was nothing to what it 
might have been in broad daylight, for what 
with the darkness of night, and the little prep- 
aration the Spaniards could make for such a 
business, and the extreme haste with which they 
discharged their guns (many not understanding 
what was the occasion of all this uproar), nearly 
all the shot flew so wide of the mark that not 
above one in twenty struck that at which it was 
aimed. 

Meantime Captain Morgan, with the Sieur 
Simon, who had followed him upon deck, stood 
just above where our hero lay behind the shelter 
of the bulwark. The captain had lit a pipe of 
tobacco, and he stood now in the bright moon- 
light close to the rail, with his hands behind 
him, looking out ahead with the utmost coolness 
imaginable, and paying no more attention to 
the din of battle than though it were twenty 
leagues away. Now and then he would take 
his pipe from his lips to utter an order to the 
32 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


man at the wheel. Excepting this he stood 
there hardly moving at all, the wind blowing his 
long red hair over his shoulders. 

Had it not been for the armed galley the 
pirates might have got the galleon away with 
no great harm done in spite of all this can- 
nonading, for the man-of-war which rode at 
anchor nighest to them at the mouth of the 
harbor was still so far away that they might 
have passed it by hugging pretty close to the 
shore, and that without any great harm being 
done to them in the darkness. But just at this 
moment, when the open water lay in sight, came 
this galley pulling out from behind the point of 
the shore in such a manner as either to head our 
pirates off entirely or else to compel them to 
approach so near to the man-of-war that that 
latter vessel could bring its guns to bear with 
more effect. 

This galley, I must tell you, was like others 
of its kind such as you may find in these waters, 
the hull being long and cut low to the water so 
as to allow the oars to dip freely. The bow 
was sharp and projected far out ahead, mount- 
ing a swivel upon it, while at the stern a number 
of galleries built one above another into a castle 
3 33 


STOLEN TREASURE 


gave shelter to several companies of musketeers 
as well as the officers commanding them. 

Our hero could behold the approach of this 
galley from above the starboard bulwarks, and 
it appeared to him impossible for them to hope 
to escape either it or the man-of-war. But still 
Captain Morgan maintained the same com- 
posure that he had exhibited all the while, only 
now and then delivering an order to the man 
at the wheel, who, putting the helm over, threw 
the bows of the galleon around more to the 
larboard, as though to escape the bow of the 
galley and get into the open water beyond. 
This course brought the pirates ever closer and 
closer to the man-of-war, which now began to 
add its thunder to the din of the battle, and 
with so much more effect that at every discharge 
you might hear the crashing and crackling of 
splintered wood, and now and then the outcry 
or groaning of some man who was hurt. In- 
deed, had it been daylight, they must at this 
juncture all have perished, though, as was said, 
what with the night and the confusion and the 
hurry, they escaped entire destruction, though 
more by a miracle than through any policy upon 
their own part. 


34 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


Meantime the galley, steering as though to 
come aboard of them, had now come so near 
that it, too, presently began to open its musketry 
fire upon them, so that the humming and rat- 
tling of bullets were presently added to the din 
of cannonading. 

In two minutes more it would have been 
aboard of them, when in a moment Captain 
Morgan roared out of a sudden to the man at 
the helm to put it hard a starboard. In re- 
sponse the man ran the wheel over with the 
utmost quickness, and the galleon, obeying her 
helm very readily, came around upon a course 
which, if continued, would certainly bring them 
into collision with their enemy. 

It is possible at first the Spaniards imagined 
the pirates intended to escape past their stern, 
for they instantly began backing oars to keep 
them from getting past, so that the water was 
all of a foam about them ; at the same time they 
did this they poured in such a fire of musketry 
that it was a miracle that no more execution was 
accomplished than happened. 

As for our hero, methinks for the moment he 
forgot all about everything else than as to 
whether or no his captain’s manoeuvre would 
35 


STOLEN TREASURE 


succeed, for in the very first moment he divined, 
as by some instinct, what Captain Morgan pur- 
posed doing. 

At this moment, so particular in the execu- 
tion of this nice design, a bullet suddenly struck 
down the man at the wheel. Hearing the sharp 
outcry, our Harry turned to see him fall forward, 
and then to his hands and knees upon the deck, 
the blood running in a black pool beneath him, 
while the wheel, escaping from his hands, spun 
over until the spokes were all of a mist. 

In a moment the ship would have fallen off 
before the wind had not our hero, leaping to the 
wheel (even as Captain Morgan shouted an 
order for some one to do so), seized the flying 
spokes, whirling them back again, and so bring- 
ing the bow of the galleon up to its former course. 

In the first moment of this effort he had 
reckoned of nothing but of carrying out his 
captain’s designs. He neither thought of 
cannon-balls nor of bullets. But now that his 
task was accomplished, he came suddenly back 
to himself to And the galleries of the galleon 
aflame with musket-shots, and to become aware 
with a most horrible sinking of the spirits that 
all the shots therefrom were intended for him. 
36 


OUR HERO, LEAPING TO THE WHEEL, SEIZED THE FLYING SPOKES 




WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


He cast his eyes about him with despair, but no 
one came to ease him of his task, which, having 
undertaken, he had too much spirit to resign 
from carrying through to the end, though he 
was well aware that the very next instant might 
mean his sudden and violent death. His ears 
hummed and rang, and his brain swam as light 
as a feather. I know not whether he breathed, 
but he shut his eyes tight as though that might 
save him from the bullets that were raining 
about him. 

At this moment the Spaniards must have dis- 
covered for the first time the pirates’ design, for 
of a sudden they ceased firing, and began to 
shout out a multitude of orders, while the oars 
lashed the water all about with a foam. But 
it was too late then for them to escape, for with- 
in a couple of seconds the galleon struck her 
enemy a blow so violent upon the larboard 
quarter as nearly to hurl our Harry upon the 
deck, and then with a dreadful, horrible crack- 
ling of wood, commingled with a yelling of men’s 
voices, the galley was swung around upon her 
side, and the galleon, sailing into the open sea, 
left nothing of her immediate enemy but a 
sinking wreck, and the water dotted all over 
37 


STOLEN TREASURE 

with bobbing heads and waving hands in the 
moonlight. 

And now, indeed, that all danger was past 
and gone, there were plenty to come running to 
help our hero at the wheel. As for Captain 
Morgan, having come down upon the main-deck, 
he fetehes the young helmsman a clap upon the 
back. “Well, Master Harry,” says he, “and 
did I not tell you I would make a man of you?” 
Whereat our poor Harry fell a-laughing, but 
with a sad catch in his voice, for his hands 
trembled as with an ague, and were as cold as ice. 
As for his emotions, God knows he was nearer 
crying than laughing, if Captain Morgan had 
but known it. 

Nevertheless, though undertaken under the 
spur of the moment, I protest it was indeed a 
brave deed, and I cannot but wonder how many 
young gentlemen of sixteen there are to-day 
who, upon a like occasion, would act as well as 
our Harry. 


V 


The balance of our hero’s adventures were 
of a lighter sort than those already recounted, 
38 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


for the next morning, the Spanish captain (a 
very polite and well-bred gentleman) having 
fitted him out with a suit of his own clothes, 
Master Harry was presented in a proper form 
to the ladies. For Captain Morgan, if he had 
felt a liking for the young man before, could not 
now show sufficient regard for him. He ate in 
the great cabin and was petted by all. Madam 
Simon, who was a fat and red-faced lady, was 
forever praising him, and the young miss, who 
was extremely well-looking, was as continually 
making eyes at him. 

She and Master Harry, I must tell you, would 
spend hours together, she making pretence of 
teaching him French, although he was so 
possessed with a passion of love that he was 
nigh suffocated with it. She, upon her part, 
perceiving his emotions, responded with ex- 
treme good-nature and complacency, so that 
had our hero been older, and the voyage proved 
longer, he might have become entirely enmeshed 
in the toils of his fair siren. For all this while, 
you are to understand, the pirates were making 
sail straight for Jamaica, which they reached 
upon the third day in perfect safety. 

In that time, however, the pirates had well- 
39 


STOLEN TREASURE 


nigh gone crazy for joy; for when they came 
to examine their purchase they discovered her 
cargo to consist of plate to the prodigious sum 
of ;gi 30,000 in value. ’Twas a wonder they 
did not all make themselves drunk for joy. 
No doubt they would have done so had not 
Captain Morgan, knowing they were still in the 
exact track of the Spanish fleets, threatened them 
that the first man among them who touched a 
drop of rum without his permission he would 
shoot him dead upon the deck. This threat 
had such effect that they all remained entirely 
sober until they had reached Port Royal Har- 
bor, which they did about nine o’clock in the 
morning. 

And now it was that our hero’s romance came 
all tumbling down about his ears with a run. 
For they had hardly come to anchor in the 
harbor when a boat came from a man-of-war, 
and who should come stepping aboard but 
Lieutenant Grantley (a particular friend of our 
hero’s father) and his own eldest brother 
Thomas, who, putting on a very stern face, in- 
formed Master Harry that he was a desperate 
and hardened villain who was sure to end at the 
gallows, and that he was to go immediately 
40 


WITH THE BUCCANEERS 


back to his home again. He told our embryo 
pirate that his family had nigh gone distracted 
because of his wicked and ungrateful conduct. 
Nor could our hero move him from his inflexi- 
ble purpose. “What,” says our Harry, “and 
will you not then let me wait until our prize 
is divided and I get my share?” 

“Prize, indeed!” says his brother. “And do 
you then really think that your father would 
consent to your having a share in this terrible 
bloody and murthering business?” 

And so, after a good deal of argument, our 
hero was constrained to go ; nor did he even have 
an opportunity to bid adieu to his inamorata. 
Nor did he see her any more, except from a dis- 
tance, she standing on the poop-deck as he was 
rowed away from her, her face all stained with 
crying. For himself, he felt that there was no 
more joy in life ; nevertheless, standing up in the 
stern of the boat, he made shift, though with an 
aching heart, to deliver her a fine bow with the 
hat he had borrowed from the Spanish captain, 
before his brother bade him sit down again. 

And so to the ending of this story, with only 
this to relate, that our Master Harry, so far 
from going to the gallows, became in good time 

41 


STOLEN TREASURE 

a respectable and wealthy sugar merchant with 
an English wife and a fine family of children, 
whereunto, when the mood was upon him, 
he has sometimes told these adventures (and 
sundry others not here recounted) as I have told 
them unto you. 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE- 

BOX 








\ 


! 



'» r 





II 

TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 

An Old-time Story of the Days of Captain Kidd. 

I 

T O tell about Tom Chist, and how he got 
his name, and how he came to be living 
at the little settlement of Henlopen, just inside 
the mouth of the Delaware Bay, the story must 
begin as far back as 1686, when a great storm 
swept the Atlantic coast from end to end. Dur- 
ing the heaviest part of the hurricane a bark 
went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals, 
just below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of 
the Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist was the only 
soul of all those on board the ill-fated vessel 
who escaped alive. 

This story must first be told, because it was 
on account of the strange and miraculous escape 
45 


STOLEN TREASURE 


that happened to him at that time that he 
gained the name that was given to him. 

Even as late as that time of the American 
colonies, the little scattered settlement at Hen- 
lopen, made up of English, with a few Dutch 
and Swedish people, was still only a spot upon 
the face of the great American wilderness that 
spread away, with swamp and forest, no man 
knew how far to the westward. That wilder- 
ness was not only full of wild beasts, but of 
Indian savages, who every fall would come in 
wandering tribes to spend the winter along the 
shores of the fresh-water lakes below Henlopen. 
There for four or five months they would live 
upon fish and clams and wild ducks and geese, 
chipping their arrow-heads, and making their 
earthenware pots and pans under the lee of the 
sand-hills and pine woods below the Capes. 

Sometimes on Sundays, when the Rev. Hillary 
Jones would be preaching in the little log 
church back in the woods, these half-clad red 
savages would come in from the cold, and sit 
squatting in the back part of the church, listen- 
ing stolidly to the words that had no meaning 
for them. 

But about the wreck of the bark in 1686. 

46 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


Such a wreck as tha-t which then went ashore on 
the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals was a godsend to 
the poor and needy settlers in the wilderness 
where so few good things ever came. For the 
vessel went to pieces during the night, and the 
next morning the beach was strewn with 
wreckage — ^boxes and barrels, chests and spars, 
timbers and planks, a plentiful and bountiful 
harvest to be gathered up by the settlers as 
they chose, with no one to forbid or prevent 
them. 

The name of the bark, as found painted on 
some of the water-barrels and sea-chests, was 
the Bristol Merchant, and she no doubt hailed 
from England. 

As was said, the only soul who escaped alive 
off the wreck was Tom Chist. 

A settler, a fisherman named Matt Abraham- 
son, and his daughter Molly, found Tom. He 
was washed up on the beach among the wreck- 
age, in a great w'ooden box which had been 
securely tied around with a rope and lashed be- 
tween two spars — apparently for better pro- 
tection in beating through the surf. Matt 
Abrahamson thought he had found something 
of more than usual value when he came upon 
47 


STOLEN TREASURE 


this chest ; but when he cut the cords and broke 
open the box with his broadaxe, he could not 
have been more astonished had he beheld a 
salamander instead of a baby of nine or ten 
months old lying half smothered in the blankets 
that covered the bottom of the chest. 

Matt Abrahamson’s daughter Molly had had 
a baby who had died a month or so before. 
So when she saw the little one lying there in 
the bottom of the chest, she cried out in a great 
loud voice that the Good Man had sent her an- 
other baby in place of her own. 

The rain was driving before the hurricane- 
storm in dim, slanting sheets, and so she 
wrapped up the baby in the man’s coat she wore 
and ran off home without waiting to gather up 
any more of the wreckage. 

It was Parson Jones who gave the foundling 
his name. MTien the news came to his ears of 
what Matt Abrahamson had found, he went 
over to the fisherman’s cabin to see the child. 
He examined the clothes in which the baby 
was dressed. They were of fine linen and 
handsomely stitched, and the reverend gentle- 
man opined that the foundling’s parents must 
have been of quality. A kerchief had been 
48 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


wrapped around the baby’s neck and under its 
arms and tied behind, and in the corner, marked 
with very fine needlework, were the initials 

T. C. 

“What d’ye call him, Molly?” said Parson 
Jones. He was standing, as he spoke, with his 
back to the fire, warming his palms before the 
blaze. The pocket of the great-coat he wore 
bulged out with a big case-bottle of spirits 
which he had gathered up out of the wreck that 
afternoon. “What d’ye call him, Molly?” 

“ I’ll call him Tom, after my own baby.” 

“That goes very well with the initial on the 
kerchief,” said Parson Jones. “ But what other 
name d’ye give him? Let it be something to 
go with the C.” 

“I don’t know,” said Molly. 

“Why not call him ‘Chist,’ since he was born 
in a chist out of the sea? ‘Tom Chist’ — the 
name goes off like a flash in the pan.” And so 
“Tom Chist” he was called and “Tom Chist” 
he was christened. 

So much for the beginning of the history of 
Tom Chist. The story of Captain Kidd’s treas- 
ure-box does not begin until the late spring of 
1699. 


4 


49 


STOLEN TREASURE 


That was the year that the famous pirate 
captain, coming up from the West Indies, sailed 
his sloop into the Delaware Bay, where he lay 
for over a month waiting for news from his 
friends in New York. 

For he had sent word to that town asking if 
the coast was clear for him to return home with 
the rich prize he had brought from the Indian 
seas and the coast of Africa, and meantime he 
lay there in the Delaware Bay waiting for a 
reply. Before he left he turned the whole of 
Tom Chist’s life topsy-turvy with something 
that he brought ashore. 

By that time Tom Chist had grown into a 
strong-limbed, thick- jointed boy of fourteen or 
fifteen years of age. It was a miserable dog’s 
life he lived with old Matt Abrahamson, for the 
old fisherman was in his cups more than half the 
time, and when he was so there was hardly a 
day passed that he did not give Tom a curse 
or a buffet or, as like as not, an actual beating. 
One would have thought that such treatment 
would have broken the spirit of the poor little 
foundling, but it had just the opposite effect 
upon Tom Chist, who was one of your stub- 
born, sturdy, stiff -willed fellows who only grow 
50 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


harder and more tough the more they are 
ill-treated. It had been a long time now since 
he had made any outcry or complaint at the 
hard usage he suffered from old Matt. At 
such times he would shut his teeth and bear 
whatever came to him, until sometimes the 
half -drunken old man would be driven al- 
most mad by his stubborn silence. Maybe he 
would stop in the midst of the beating he 
was administering, and, grinding his teeth, 
would cry out : “ Won’t ye say naught ? Won’t 
ye say naught? Well, then. I’ll see if I can’t 
make ye say naught.” When things had 
reached such a pass as this Molly would gen- 
erally interfere to protect her foster-son, and 
then she and Tom would together fight the old 
man until they had wrenched the stick or the 
strap out of his hand. Then old Matt would 
chase them out-of-doors and around and around 
the house for maybe half an hour until his 
anger was cool, when he would go back again, 
and for a time the storm would be over. 

Besides his foster-mother, Tom Chist had a 
very good friend in Parson Jones, who used to 
come over every now and then to Abrahamson’s 
hut upon the chance of getting a half-dozen fish 

51 


STOLEN TREASURE 


for breakfast. He always had a kind word or 
two for Tom, who during the winter evenings 
would go over to the good man’s house to learn 
his letters, and to read and write and cipher a 
little, so that by now he was able to spell the 
words out of the Bible and the almanac, and knew 
enough to change tuppence into four ha’pennies. 

This is the sort of boy Tom Chist was, and 
this is the sort of life he led. 

In the late spring or early summer of 1699 
Captain Kidd’s sloop sailed into the mouth of 
the Delaware Bay and changed the whole fort- 
une of his life. 

And this is how you come to the story of 
Captain Kidd’s treasure-box. 


II 

Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed 
boat in which he went fishing some distance 
down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the 
old wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. 
This was the usual fishing-ground of the settlers, 
and here Old Matt’s boat generally lay drawn 
up on the sand. 


52 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


There had been a thunder-storm that after- 
noon, and Tom had gone down the beach to 
bale out the boat in readiness for the morning’s 
fishing. 

It was full moonlight now, as he was re- 
turning, and the night sky was full of floating 
clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash 
to the westward, and once a muttering growl 
of thunder, promising another storm to come. 

All that day the pirate sloop had been lying 
just off the shore back of the Capes, and now 
Tom Chist could see the sails glimmering pallid- 
ly in the moonlight, spread for drying after the 
storm. He was walking up the shore homeward 
when he became aware that at some distance 
ahead of him there was a ship’s boat drawn 
up on the little narrow beach, and a group of 
men clustered about it. He hurried forward 
with a good deal of curiosity to see who had 
landed, but it was not until he had come close 
to them that he could distinguish who and what 
they were. Then he knew that it must be a 
party who had come off the pirate sloop. They 
had evidently just landed, and two men were 
lifting out a chest from the boat. One of them 
was a negro, naked to the waist, and the other 
53 


STOLEN TREASURE 

was a white man in his shirt-sleeves, wearing 
petticoat breeches, a Monterey cap upon his 
head, a red bandanna handkerchief around his 
neck, and gold ear-rings in his ears. He had 
a long, plaited queue hanging down his back, 
and a great sheath-knife dangling from his side. 
Another man, evidently the captain of the party, 
stood at a little distance as they lifted the chest 
out of the boat. He had a cane in one hand and 
a lighted lantern in the other, although the 
moon was shining as bright as day. He wore 
jack-boots and a handsome laced coat, and he 
had a long, drooping mustache that curled down 
below his chin. He wore a fine, feathered hat, 
and his long black hair hung down upon his 
shoulders. 

All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight 
that glinted and twinkled upon the gilt buttons 
of his coat. 

They were so busy lifting the chest from the 
boat that at first they did not observe that Tom 
Chist had come up and was standing there. 
It was the white man with the long, plaited 
queue and the gold ear-rings that spoke to him. 
“Boy, what do you want here, boy?’’ he said, 
in a rough, hoarse voice. “Whete d’ye come 
54 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


from?” And then dropping his end of the 
chest, and without giving Tom time to answer, 
he pointed off down the beach, and said, “ You’d 
better be going about your own business, if you 
know what’s good for you ; and don’t you come 
back, or you’ll find what you don’t want waiting 
for you.” 

Tom saw in a glance that the pirates were all 
looking at him, and then, without saying a 
word, he turned and walked away. The man 
who had spoken to him followed him threaten- 
ingly for some little distance, as though to see 
that he had gone away as he was bidden to do. 
But presently he stopped, and Tom hurried on 
alone, until the boat and the crew and all 
were dropped away behind and lost in the 
moonlight night. Then he himself stopped 
also, turned, and looked back whence he had 
come. 

There had been something very strange in the 
appearance of the men he had just seen, some- 
thing very mysterious in their actions, and he 
wondered what it all meant, and what they were 
going to do. He stood for a little while thus 
looking and listening. He could see nothing, 
and could hear only the sound of distant talking. 

55 


STOLEN TREASURE 


What were they doing on the lonely shore thus 
at night? Then, following a sudden impulse, 
he turned and cut off across the sand -hum- 
mocks, skirting around inland, but keeping 
pretty close to the shore, his object being to 
spy upon them, and to watch what they were 
about from the back of the low sand-hills that 
fronted the beach. 

He had gone along some distance in his cir- 
cuitous return when he became aware of the 
sound of voices that seemed to be drawing 
closer to him as he came towards the speakers. 
He stopped and stood listening, and instantly, 
as he stopped, the voices stopped also. He 
crouched there silently in the bright, glimmering 
moonlight, surrounded by the silent stretches 
of sand, and the stillness seemed to press upon 
him like a heavy hand. Then suddenly the 
sound of a man’s voice began again, and as Tom 
listened he could hear some one slowly counting. 
“Ninety-one,” the voice began, “ninety-two, 
ninety-three, ninety- four, ninety-five, ninety- 
six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one 
hundred, one hundred and one” — the slow, 
monotonous count coming nearer and nearer 
to him — “one hundred and two, one hundred 




( i t 


. . AND TWENTY-ONE AND TWENTY-TWO 


> 3 » > 


9 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


and three, one hundred and four,” and so on 
in its monotonous reckoning. 

vSuddenly he saw three heads appear above 
the sand-hill, so close to him that he crouched 
down quickly with a keen thrill, close beside the 
hummock near which he stood. His first fear 
was that they might have seen him in the moon- 
light ; but they had not, and his heart rose again 
as the counting voice went steadily on. “ One 
hundred and twenty,” it was saying — “and 
twenty-one, and twenty-two, and twenty-three, 
and twenty-four,” and then he who was count- 
ing came out from behind the little sandy rise 
into the white and open level of shimmering 
brightness. 

It was the man with the cane whom Tom had 
seen some time before — the captain of the party 
who had landed. He carried his cane under his 
arm now, and was holding his lantern close to 
something that he held in his hand, and upon 
which he looked narrowly as he walked with a 
slow and measured tread in a perfectly straight 
line across the sand, counting each step as he 
took it. “ And twenty-five, and twenty-six, and 
twenty-seven, and twenty-eight, and twenty- 
nine, and thirty.” 


57 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Behind him walked two other figures; one 
was the half-naked negro, the other the man 
with the plaited queue and the ear-rings, whom 
Tom had seen lifting the chest out of the boat. 
Now they were carrying the heavy box between 
them, laboring through the sand with shuffling 
tread as they bore it onward. 

As he who was counting pronounced the word 
“thirty,’’ the two men set the chest down on 
the sand with a grunt, the white man panting 
and blowing and wiping his sleeve across his 
forehead. And immediately he who counted 
took out a slip of paper and marked something 
down upon it. They stood there for a long 
time, during which Tom lay behind the sand- 
hummock watching them, and for a while the 
silence was uninterrupted. In the perfect still- 
ness Tom could hear the washing of the little 
waves beating upon the distant beach, and once 
the far-away sound of a laugh from one of 
those who stood by the ship’s boat. 

One, two, three minutes passed, and then the 
men picked up the chest and started on again; 
and then again the other man began his count- 
ing. “Thirty and one, and thirty and two, 
and thirty and three, and thirty and four” — 

58 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


he walked straight across the level open, still 
looking intently at that which he held in his 
hand — “and thirty and five, and thirty and 
six, and thirty and seven,” and so on, until the 
three figures disappeared in the little hollow be- 
tween the two sand-hills on the opposite side 
of the open, and still Tom could hear the sound 
of the coimting voice in the distance. 

Just as they disappeared behind the hill there 
was a sudden faint flash of light ; and by-and-by , 
as Tom lay still listening to the counting, he 
heard, after a long interval, a far-away muffled 
rumble of distant thunder. He waited for a 
while, and then arose and stepped to the top 
of the sand-hummock behind which he had been 
lying. He looked all about him, but there was 
no one else to be seen. Then he stepped down 
from the hummock and followed in the direction 
wfflich the pirate captain and the two men 
carrying the chest had gone. He crept along 
cautiously, stopping now and then to make 
sure that he still heard the counting voice, and 
when it ceased he lay down upon the sand and 
waited until it began again. 

Presently, so following the pirates, he saw 
the three figures again in the distance, and, 
59 


STOLEN TREASURE 


skirting around back of a hill of sand covered 
with coarse sedge-grass, he came to where he 
overlooked a little open level space gleaming 
white in the moonlight. 

The three had been crossing the level of sand, 
and were now, not more than twenty-five paces 
from him. They had again set down the chest, 
upon which the white man with the long queue 
and the gold ear-rings had seated to rest him- 
self, the negro standing close beside him. The 
moon shone as bright as day and full upon his 
face. It was looking directly at Tom Chist, 
every line as keen cut with white lights and 
black shadows as though it had been carved in 
ivory and jet. He sat perfectly motionless, 
and Tom drew back with a start, almost think- 
ing he had been discovered. He lay silent, his 
heart beating heavily in his throat; but there 
was no alarm, and presently he heard the count- 
ing begin again, and when he looked once more 
he saw they were going aw'ay straight across the 
little open. A soft, sliding hillock of sand lay 
directly in front of them. They did not turn 
aside, but went straight over it, the leader 
helping himself up the sandy slope with his 
cane, still counting and still keeping his eyes 
6o 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


fixed upon that which he held in his hand. Then 
they disappeared again behind the white crest 
on the other side. 

So Tom followed them cautiously until they 
had gone almost half a mile inland. When next 
he saw them clearly it was from a little sandy 
rise which looked down like the crest of a bowl 
upon the floor of sand below. U pon this smooth , 
white floor the moon beat wdth almost dazzling 
brightness. 

The white man who had helped to carry the 
chest was now kneeling, busied at some work, 
though what it was Tom at first could not see. 
He was whittling the point of a stick into a long 
wooden peg, and when, by-and-by, he had fin- 
ished what he was about, he arose and stepped 
to where he who seemed to be the captain 
had stuck his cane upright into the ground as 
though to mark some particular spot. He drew 
the cane out of the sand, thrusting the stick 
down in its stead. Then he drove the long 
peg down with a wooden mallet which the 
negro handed to him. The sharp rapping of 
the mallet upon the top of the peg sounded 
loud in the perfect stillness, and Tom lay 
watching and wondering what it all meant. 

6i 


STOLEN TREASURE 


The man, with quick-repeated blows, drove the 
peg farther and farther down into the sand until 
it showed only two or three inches above the 
surface. As he finished his work there was an- 
other faint flash of light, and by-and-by another 
smothered rumble of thimder, and Tom as he 
looked out towards the westward, saw the silver 
rim of the round and sharply outlined thunder- 
cloud rising slowly up into the sky and pushing 
the other and broken drifting clouds before it. 

The two white men were now stooping over 
the peg, the negro man watching them. Then 
presently the man with the cane started straight 
away from the peg, carrying the end of a meas- 
uring-line with him, the other end of which the 
man with the plaited queue held against the 
top of the peg. When the pirate captain had 
reached the end of the measuring - line he 
marked a cross upon the sand, and then again 
they measured out another stretch of space. 

So they measured a distance five times over, 
and then, from where Tom lay, he could see the 
man with the queue drive another peg just at 
the foot of a sloping rise of sand that swept up 
beyond into a tall white dune marked sharp and 
clear against the night sky behind. As soon 
62 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


as the man with the plaited queue had driven the 
second peg into the ground they began meas- 
uring again, and so, still measuring, disappear- 
ed in another direction which took them in be- 
hind the sand-dune, where Tom no longer could 
see what they were doing. 

The negro still sat by the chest where the two 
had left him, and so bright wa^ the moonlight 
that from where he lay Tom could see the glint 
of it twinkling in the whites of his eyeballs. 

Presently from behind the hill there came, for 
the third time, the sharp rapping sound of the 
mallet driving still another peg, and then after 
a while the two pirates emerged from behind the 
sloping whiteness into the space of moonlight 
again. 

They came direct to where the chest lay, and 
the white man and the black man lifting it once 
more, they walked away across the level of open 
sand, and so on behind the edge of the hill and 
out of Tom’s sight. 


Ill 

Tom Chist could no longer see what the 
pirates were doing, neither did he dare to cross 

63 


STOLEN TREASURE 


over the open space of sand that now lay be- 
tween them and him. He lay there speculating 
as to what they were about, and meantime the 
storm cloud was rising higher and higher above 
the horizon, with louder and louder mutterings 
of thunder following each dull flash from out 
the cloudy, cavernous depths. In the silence 
he could hear an occasional click as of some iron 
implement, and he opined that the pirates were 
burying the chest, though just where they were 
at work he could neither see nor tell. 

Still he lay there watching and listening, and 
by-and-by a puff of warm air blew across the 
sand, and a thumping tumble of louder thunder 
leaped from out the belly of the storm cloud, 
which every minute was coming nearer and 
nearer. Still Tom Chist lay watching. 

Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the three 
figures reappeared from behind the sand-hill, 
the pirate captain leading the way, and the 
negro and white man following close behind 
him. They had gone about half-way across 
the white, sandy level between the hill and the 
hummock behind which Tom Chist lay, when 
the white man stopped and bent over as though 
to tie his shoe. 


64 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


This brought the negro a few steps in front 
of his companion. 

That which then followed happened so sud- 
denly, so unexpectedly, so swiftly, that Tom 
Chist had hardly time to realize what it all 
meant before it was over. As the negro passed 
him the white man arose suddenly and silently 
erect, and Tom Chist saw the white moonlight 
glint upon the blade of a great dirk-knife which he 
now held in his hand. He took one, two silent, 
catlike steps behind the unsuspecting negro. 
Then there was a sweeping flash of the blade in 
the pallid light, and a blow, the thump of which 
Tom could distinctly hear even from where he 
lay stretched out upon the sand. There was an 
instant echoing yell from the black man, who 
ran stumbling forward, who stopped, who re- 
gained his footing, and then stood for an in- 
stant as though rooted to the spot. 

Tom had distinctly seen the knife enter his 
back, and even thought that he had seen the 
glint of the point as it came out from the 
breast. 

Meantime the pirate captain had stopped, 
and now stood with his hand resting upon his 
cane looking impassively on. 

65 


5 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Then the black man started to run. The 
white man stood for a while glaring after him; 
then he too started after his victim upon the 
run. The black man was not very far from 
Tom when he staggered and fell. He tried to 
rise, then fell forward again, and lay at length. 
At that instant the first edge of the cloud cut 
across the moon, and there was a sudden dark- 
ness ; but in the silence Tom heard the sound of 
another blow and a groan, and then presently 
a voice calling to the pirate captain that it was 
all over. 

He saw the dim form of the captain crossing 
the level sand, and then, as the moon sailed 
out from behind the cloud, he saw the white 
man standing over a black figure that lay 
motionless upon the sand. 

Then Tom Chist scrambled up and ran away, 
plunging down into the hollow of sand that lay 
in the shadows below. Over the next rise he 
ran, and down again into the next black hollow, 
and so on over the sliding, shifting ground, 
panting and gasping. It seemed to him that he 
could hear footsteps following, and in the terror 
that possessed him he almost expected every 
instant to feel the cold knife-blade slide be- 
66 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


tween his own ribs in such a thrust from behind 
as he had seen given to the poor black man. 

So he ran on like one in a nightmare. His 
feet grew heavy hke lead, he panted and gasped, 
his breath came hot and dry in his throat. But 
still he ran and ran until at last he found him- 
self in front of old Matt Abrahamson’s cabin, 
gasping, panting, and sobbing for breath, his 
knees relaxed and his thighs trembling with 
weakness. 

As he opened the door and dashed into the 
darkened cabin (for both Matt and Molly were 
long ago asleep in bed) there was a flash of 
light, and even as he slammed to the door be- 
hind him there was an instant peal of thunder, 
heavy as though a great weight had been 
dropped upon the roof of the sky, so that the 
doors and windows of the cabin rattled. 


IV 

Then Tom Chist crept to bed, trembling, 
shuddering, bathed in sweat, his heart beating 
like a trip-hammer, and his brain dizzy from 
that long, terror-inspired race through the soft 
67 


STOLEN TREASURE 


sand in which he had striven to outstrip he 
knew not what pursuing horror. 

For a long, long time he lay awake, trembling 
and chattering with nervous chills, and when 
he did fall asleep it was only to drop into 
monstrous dreams in which he once again saw 
ever enacted, with various grotesque variations, 
the tragic drama which his waking eyes had 
beheld the night before. 

Then came the dawning of the broad, wet 
daylight, and before the rising of the sun Tom 
was up and out-of-doors to find the young day 
dripping with the rain of overnight. 

His first act was to climb the nearest sand- 
hill and to gaze out towards the offing where the 
pirate ship had been the day before. 

It was no longer there. 

Soon afterwards Matt Abrahamson came out 
of the cabin and he called to Tom to go get a 
bite to eat, for it was time for them to be away 
fishing. 

All that morning the recollection of the night 
before hung over Tom Chist like a great cloud 
of boding trouble. It filled the confined area 
of the little boat and spread over the entire 
wide spaces of sky and sea that surrounded 
68 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


them. Not for a moment was it lifted. Even 
when he was hauling in his wet and dripping 
line with a struggling fish at the end of it a 
recurrent memory of what he had seen would 
suddenly come upon him, and he w’ould groan 
in spirit at the recollection. He looked at Matt 
Abrahamson’s leathery face, at his lantern jaws 
cavernously and stolidly chewing at a tobacco 
leaf, and it seemed monstrous to him that the 
old man should be so unconscious of the black 
cloud that wrapped them all about. 

When the boat reached the shore again he 
leaped scrambling to the beach, and as soon as 
his dinner was eaten he hurried away to find the 
Dominie Jones. 

He ran all the way from Abrahamson’s hut 
to the Parson’s house, hardly stopping once, and 
when he knocked at the door he was panting 
and sobbing for breath. 

The good man was sitting on the back-kitchen 
door-step smoking his long pipe of tobacco out 
into the sunlight, while his wife within was 
rattling about among the pans and dishes in 
preparation of their supper, of which a strong, 
porky smell already filled the air. 

Then Tom Chist told his story, panting, 
69 


STOLEN TREASURE 


hurrying, tumbling one word over another in 
his haste, and Parson Jones listened, breaking 
every now and then into an ejaculation of 
wonder. The light in his pipe went out and the 
bowl turned cold. 

“And I don’t see why they should have killed 
the poor black man,” said Tom, as he finished 
his narrative. 

“Why, that is very easy enough to under- 
stand,” said the good reverend man. “ ’Twas 
a treasure-box they buried!” 

In his agitation Mr. Jones had risen from his 
seat and was now stumping up and down, 
puffing at his empty tobacco-pipe as though it 
were still alight. 

“A treasure-box!” cried out Tom. 

“Aye, a treasure - box ! And that was why 
they killed the poor black man. He was the 
only one, d’ye see, besides they two who knew 
the place where ’twas hid, and now that they’ve 
killed him out of the way, there’s nobody but 
themselves knows. The villains — Tut, tut, 
look at that now!” In his excitement the 
dominie had snapped the stem of his tobacco- 
pipe in two. 

“Why, then,” said Tom, “if that is so, ’tis 
70 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


indeed a wicked, bloody treasure, and fit to 
bring a curse upon anybody who finds it!” 

“ ’Tis more like to bring a curse upon the soul 
who buried it,” said Parson Jones, “and it may 
be a blessing to him who finds it. But tell me, 
Tom, do you think you could find the place 
again where ’twas hid?” 

“I can’t tell that,” said Tom, “’twas all in 
among the sand-humps, d’ye see, and it was at 
night into the bargain. Maybe we could find 
the marks of their feet in the sand,” he added. 

“’Tis not likely,” said the reverend gentle- 
man, “for the storm last night would have 
washed all that away.” 

“I could find the place,” said Tom, “where 
the boat was drawn up on the beach.” 

“ Why, then, that’s something to start from, 
Tom,” said his friend. “If we can find that, 
then maybe we can find whither they went from 
there.” 

“If I was certain it was a treasure-box,” 
cried out Tom Chist, “ I would rake over every 
foot of sand betwixt here and Henlopen to find 
it.” 

“ ’Twould be like hunting for a pin in a hay- 
stack,” said the Rev. Hilary Jones. 

71 


STOLEN TREASURE 


As Tom walked away home, it seemed as 
though a ton’s weight of gloom had been rolled 
away from his soul. The next day he and 
Parson Jones were to go treasure-hunting to- 
gether; it seemed to Tom as though he could 
hardly wait for the time to come. 


V 

The next afternoon Parson Jones and Tom 
Chist started off together upon the expedition 
that made Tom’s fortune forever. Tom car- 
ried a spade over his shoulder and the rev- 
erend gentleman walked along beside him with 
his cane. 

As they jogged along up the beach they 
talked together about the only thing they could 
talk about — the treasure-box. “And how big 
did you say ’twas ?” quoth the good gentleman. 

“About so long,” said Tom Chist, measuring 
off upon the spade, “and about so wide, and 
this deep.” 

“And what if it should be full of money, 
Tom?” said the reverend gentleman, swinging 
his cane around and around in wide circles in 
72 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


the excitement of the thought, as he strode 
along briskly. “Suppose it should be full of 
money, what then?” 

“By Moses 1” said Tom Chist, hurrying to 
keep up with his friend, “I’d buy a ship for 
myself, I would, and I’d trade to Injy and to 
Chiny to my own boot, I would. Suppose the 
chist was all full of money, sir, and suppose we 
should find it; would there be enough in it, d’ye 
suppose, to buy a ship?” 

“To be sure there would be enough, Tom; 
enough and to spare, and a good big lump over.” 

“And if I find it ’tis mine to keep, is it, and 
no mistake?” 

“Why, to be sure it would be yours!” cried 
out the Parson, in a loud voice. “ To be sure it 
would be yours!” He knew nothing of the 
law, but the doubt of the question began at 
once to ferment in his brain, and he strode along 
in silence for a while. “Whose else would it 
be but yours if you find it?” he burst out. 
“ Can you tell me that ?” 

“ If ever I have a ship of my own,” said Tom 
Chist, “ and if ever I sail to Injy in her. I’ll 
fetch ye back the best chist of tea, sir, that ever 
was fetched from Cochin Chiny.” 

73 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Parson Jones burst out laughing. “ Thankee, 
Tom,” he said; “and 111 thankee again when I 
get my chist of tea. But tell me, Tom, didst 
thou ever hear of the farmer girl who counted 
her chickens before they were hatched?” 

It was thus they talked as they hurried along 
up the beach together, and so came to a place 
at last where Tom stopped short and stood 
looking about him. “ ’Twas just here,” he 
said, “I saw the boat last night. I know 
’twas here, for I mind me of that bit of wreck 
yonder, and that there was a tall stake drove in 
the sand just where yon stake stands.” 

Parson Jones put on his barnacles and went 
over to the stake towards which Tom pointed. 
As soon as he had looked at it carefully, he 
called out: “Why, Tom, this hath been just 
drove down into the sand. ’Tis a brand-new 
stake of wood, and the pirates must have set it 
here themselves as a mark, just as they drove 
the pegs you spoke about down into the 
sand.” 

Tom came over and looked at the stake. It 
was a stout piece of oak nearly two inches thick ; 
it had been shaped with some care, and the top 
of it had been painted red. He shook the stake 
74 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


and tried to move it, but it had been driven or 
planted so deeply into the sand that he could 
not stir it. “Aye, sir,” he said, “it must have 
been set here for a mark, for I’m sure ’twas not 
here yesterday or the day before.” He stood 
looking about him to see if there were other 
signs of the pirates’ presence. At some little 
distance there was the corner of something 
white sticking up out of the sand. He could 
see that it was a scrap of paper, and he point- 
ed to it, calling out: “Yonder is a piece of 
paper, sir. I wonder if they left that behind 
them?” 

It was a miraculous chance that placed that 
paper there. There was only an inch of it 
showing, and if it had not been for Tom’s sharp 
eyes, it would certainly have been overlooked 
and passed by. The next wind-storm would 
have covered it up, and all that afterwards 
happened never would have occurred. “Look 
sir,” he said, as he struck the sand from it, 
“it hath WTiting on it.” 

“Let me see it,” said Parson Jones. He 
adjusted the spectacles a little more firmly 
astride of his nose as he took the paper in his 
hand and began conning it. “ What’s all this ?” 

75 


STOLEN TREASURE 


he said; “a whole lot of figures and nothing 
else.” And then he read aloud, “‘Mark — 
S. S. W. by S.’ What d’ye suppose that means, 
Tom?” 

“ I don’t know, sir,” said Tom. “ But maybe 
we can understand it better if you read on.” 

“ ’Tis all a great lot of figures,” said Parson 
Jones, “ without a grain of meaning in them so 
far as I can see, unless they be sailing direc- 
tions.” And then he began reading again: 
“‘Mark — S. S. W. by S. 40, 72, 91, 130, 151, 177, 
202, 232, 256, 271 ’ — d’ye see, it must be sailing 
directions — ‘299, 335, 362, 386, 415, 446, 469, 
491, 522, 544, 571, 598’ — what a lot of them 
there be — ‘626, 652, 676, 695, 724, 851, 876, 
905, 940, 967. Peg. S. E. by E. 269 foot. 
Peg. S. S. W. by S. 427 foot. Peg. Dig to 
the west of this six foot.’” 

“What’s that about a peg?” exclaimed Tom. 
“What’s that about a peg? And then there’s 
something about digging, tool” It was as 
though a sudden light began shining into his 
brain. He felt himself growing quickly very 
excited. “ Read that over again, sir,” he cried. 
“ Why, sir, you remember I told you they drove 
a peg into the sand. And don’t they say to 
76 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


dig close to it ? Read it over again, sir — read it 
over again!” 

'‘Peg?” said the good gentleman. “To be 
sure it was about a peg. Let’s look again. Yes, 
here it is. ‘ Peg S. E. by E. 269 foot.’ ” 

“Aye!” cried out Tom Chist again, in great 
excitement. “ Don’t you remember what I told 
you, sir, 269 foot? Sure that must be what I 
saw ’em measuring with the line.” 

Parson Jones had now caught the flame of 
excitement that was blazing up so strongly in 
Tom’s breast. He felt as though some wonder- 
ful thing was about to happen to them. “To 
be sure, to be sure!” he called out, in a great 
big voice. “And then they measured out 427 
foot south-southwest by south, and then they 
drove another peg, and then they buried the 
box six foot to the west of it. Why, Tom — 
why, Tom Chist! if we’ve read this aright, thy 
fortune is made.” 

Tom Chist stood staring straight at the old 
gentleman’s excited face, and seeing nothing 
but it in all the bright inflnity of sunshine. 
Were they, indeed, about to find the treasure- 
chest? He felt the sun very hot upon his 
shoulders, and he heard the harsh, insistent 
77 


STOLEN TREASURE 


jarring of a tern that hovered and circled with 
forked tail and sharp white wings in the sun- 
light just above their heads ; but all the time 
he stood staring into the good old gentleman’s 
face. 

It was Parson Jones who first spoke. “ But 
what do all these figiures mean?” And Tom 
observed how the paper shook and rustled in 
the tremor of excitement that shook his hand. 
He raised the paper to the focus of his specta- 
cles and began to read again. “‘Mark 40, 72, 
91—’” 

“Mark?” cried out Tom, almost screaming. 
“ Why, that must mean the stake yonder ; that 
must be the mark.” And he pointed to the 
oaken stick with its red tip blazing against the 
white shimmer of sand behind it. 

“And the 40 and 72 and 91,” cried the old 
gentleman, in a voice equally shrill — “ why, that 
must mean the number of steps the pirate was 
counting when you heard him.” 

“To be sure that’s what they mean!” cried 
Tom Chist. “That is it, and it can be nothing 
else. Oh, come, sir — come, sir; let us make 
haste and find it!” 

“Stay! stay!” said the good gentleman, hold- 
78 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


ing up his hand; and again Tom Chist noticed 
how it trembled and shook. His voice was 
steady enough, though very hoarse, but his hand 
shook and trembled as though with a palsy. 
“ Stay! stay! First of all, we must follow these 
measurements. And ’tis a marvellous thing,’' 
he croaked, after a little pause, “ how this paper 
ever came to be here.” 

“Maybe it was blown here by the storm,” 
suggested Tom Chist. 

“Like enough; like enough,” said Parson 
Jones. “Like enough, after the wretches had 
buried the chest and killed the poor black man, 
they were so buffeted and bowsed about by the 
storm that it was shook out of the man’s pocket, 
and thus blew away from him without his 
knowing aught of it.” 

“But let us find the box!” cried out Tom 
Chist, flaming with his excitement. 

“ Aye, aye,” said the good man; “only stay a 
little, my boy, until we make sure what we’re 
about. I’ve got my pocket-compass here, but 
we must have something to measure off the 
feet when we have found the peg. You run 
across to Tom Brooke’s house and fetch that 
measuring-rod he used to lay out his new byre. 

79 


STOLEN TREASURE 


While you're gone I’ll pace off the distance 
marked on the paper with my pocket-compass 
here.” 


VI 

Tom Chist was gone for almost an hour, 
though he ran nearly all the way and back, up- 
borne as on the wings of the wind. When he 
returned, panting. Parson Jones was nowhere to 
be seen, but Tom saw his footsteps leading away 
inland, and he followed the scuffling marks in 
the smooth surface across the sand-humps and 
down into the hollows, and by-and-by found 
the good gentleman in a spot he at once knew 
as soon as he laid his eyes upon it. 

It was the open space where the pirates had 
driven their first peg, and where Tom Chist had 
afterwards seen them kill the poor black man. 
Tom Chist gazed around as though expecting 
to see some sign of the tragedy, but the space 
was as smooth and as undisturbed as a floor, 
excepting where, midway across it. Parson Jones 
who was now stooping over something on the 
ground, had trampled it all around about. 

When Tom Chist saw him, he was still bend- 
80 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 

ing over, scraping the sand away from some- 
thing he had found. 

It was the first peg! 

Inside of half an hour they had found the 
second and third pegs, and Tom Chist stripped 
off his coat, and began digging like mad down 
into the sand. Parson Jones standing over him 
watching him. The sun was sloping well tow- 
ards the west when the blade of Tom Chist’s 
spade struck upon something hard. 

If it had been his own heart that he had hit 
in the sand his breast could hardly have thrilled 
more sharply. 

It was the treasure-box! 

Parson Jones himself leaped down into the 
hole, and began scraping away the sand with 
his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, 
with some difficulty, they tugged and hauled 
the chest up out of the sand to the surface, 
where it lay covered all over with the grit that 
clung to it. 

It was securely locked and fastened with a 
padlock, and it took a good many blows with 
the blade of the spade to burst the bolt. Parson 
Jones himself lifted the lid. 

Tom Chist leaned forward and gazed down 

6 8i 


STOLEN TREASURE 


into the open box. He would not have been 
surprised to have seen it filled full of yellow 
gold and bright jewels. It was filled half full 
of books and papers, and half full of canvas 
bags tied safely and securely around and around 
with cords of string. 

Parson Jones lifted out one of the bags, 
and it jingled as he did so. It was full of 
money. 

He cut the string, and with trembling, shak- 
ing hands handed the bag to Tom, who, in an 
ecstasy of wonder and dizzy with delight, pour- 
ed out with swimming sight upon the coat 
spread on the ground a cataract of shining sil- 
ver money that rang and twinkled and jingled 
as it fell in a shining heap upon the coarse 
cloth. 

Parson Jones held up both hands into the air, 
and Tom stared at what he saw, wondering 
whether it was all so, and whether he was really 
awake. It seemed to him as though he was in 
a dream. 

There were two-and-twenty bags in all in the 
chest: ten of them full of silver money, eight 
of them full of gold money, three of them full 
82 



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BOTH RICH men’” 






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TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


of gold-dust, and one small bag with jewels 
wrapped up in wad cotton and paper. 

“’Tis enough,” cried out Parson Jones, “to 
make us both rich men as long as we live.” 

The burning summer sun, though sloping in 
the sky, beat down upon them as hot as fire; 
but neither of them noticed it. Neither did 
they notice himger nor thirst nor fatigue, but 
sat there as though in a trance, with the bags 
of money scattered on the sand around them, a 
great pile of money heaped upon the coat, and 
the open chest beside them. It was an hour of 
sundown before Parson Jones had begun fairly 
to examine the books and papers in the chest. 

Of the three books, two were evidently log- 
books of the pirates who had been lying off the 
mouth of the Delaware Bay all this time. The 
other book was written in Spanish, and was 
evidently the log-book of some captured prize. 

It was then, sitting there upon the sand, the 
good old gentleman reading in his high, cracking 
voice, that they first learned from the bloody 
records in those two books who it was who had 
been lying inside the Cape all this time, and 
that it was the famous Captain Kidd. Every 
now and then the reverend gentleman would 
83 


STOLEN TREASURE 


stop to exclaim, “Oh, the bloody wretch!’' or, 
“Oh, the desperate, cruel villains!” and then 
would go on reading again a scrap here and a 
scrap there. 

And all the while Tom Chist sat and listened, 
every now and then reaching out furtively and 
touching the heap of money still lying upon 
the coat. 

One might be inclined to wonder why Captain 
Kidd had kept those bloody records. He had 
probably laid them away because they so in- 
criminated many of the great people of the 
colony of New York that, with the books in evi- 
dence, it would have been impossible to bring 
the pirate to justice without dragging a dozen 
or more fine gentlemen into the dock along 
with him. If he could have kept them in his 
own possession, they would doubtless have been 
a great weapon of defence to protect him from 
the gallows. Indeed, when Captain Kidd was 
finally brought to conviction and hung, he was 
not accused of his piracies, but of striking a 
mutinous seaman upon the head with a bucket 
and accidentally killing him. The authorities 
did not dare try him for piracy. He was really 
hung because he was a pirate, and we know 
84 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


that it was the log-books that Tom Chist 
brought to New York that did the business for 
him; he was accused and convicted of man- 
slaughter for killing of his own ship-carpenter 
with a bucket. 

So Parson Jones, sitting there in the slanting 
light, read through these terrible records of pi- 
racy, and Tom, with the pile of gold and silver 
money beside him, sat and listened to him. 

What a spectacle, if any one had come upon 
them ! But they were alone, with the vast arch 
of sky empty above them and the wide white 
stretch of sand a desert around them. The sun 
sank lower and lower, until there was only time 
to glance through the other papers in the chest. 

They were nearly all goldsmiths’ bills of ex- 
change drawn in favor of certain of the most 
prominent merchants of New York. Parson 
Jones, as he read over the names, knew of near- 
ly all the gentlemen by hearsay. Aye, here 
was this gentleman; he thought that name 
would be among ’em. What? Here is Mr. 
So-and-so. Well, if all they say is true, the 
villain has robbed one of his own best friends. 
“I wonder,” he said, “why the wretch should 
have hidden these papers so carefully away 
85 


STOLEN TREASURE 


with the other treasures, for they could do him 
no good?” Then, answering his own question: 
“Like enough because these will give him a 
hold over the gentlemen to whom they are 
drawn so that he can make a good bargain for 
his own neck before he gives the bills back to 
their owners. I tell you what it is, Tom,” he 
continued, “it is you yourself shall go to New 
York and bargain for the return of these papers. 
’Twill be as good as another fortune to you.” 

The majority of the bills were drawn in favor 
of one Richard Chillings worth, Esquire. “ And 
he is,” said Parson Jones; “one of the richest 
men in the province of New York. You shall go 
to him with the news of what we have found.” 

“When shall I go?” said Tom Chist. 

“ You shall go upon the very first boat we can 
catch,” said the Parson. He had turned, still 
holding the bills in his hand, and was now 
fingering over the pile of money that yet lay 
tumbled out upon the coat. “ I wonder, Tom,” 
said he, “ if you could spare me a score or so of 
these doubloons?” 

“You shall have fifty score, if you choose,” 
said Tom, bursting with gratitude and with 
generosity in his newly found treasure. 

86 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


“You are as fine a lad as ever I saw, Tom,” 
said the Parson, “and ITl thank you to the last 
day of my life.” 

Tom scooped up a double handful of silver 
money. “Take it, sir,” he said, “and you may 
have as much more as you want of it.” 

He poured it into the dish that the good man 
made of his hands, and the Parson made a 
motion as though to empty it into his pocket. 
Then he stopped, as though a sudden doubt 
had occurred to him. “ I don’t know that ’tis 
fit for me to take this pirate money, after all,” 
he said. 

“ But you are welcome to it,” said Tom. 

Still the Parson hesitated. “Nay,” he burst 
out, “I’ll not take it; ’tis blood-money.” And 
as he spoke he chucked the whole double hand- 
ful into the now empty chest, then arose and 
dusted the sand from his breeches. Then, with 
a great deal of bustling energy, he helped to tie 
the bags again and put them all back into the 
chest. 

They reburied the chest in the place whence 
they had taken it, and then the Parson folded 
the precious paper of directions, placed it care- 
fully in his wallet, and his wallet in his pocket. 

87 


STOLEN TREASURE 


'‘Tom,” he said, for the twentieth time, “your 
fortune has been made this day.” 

And Tom Chist, as he rattled in his breeches 
pocket the half-dozen doubloons he had kept 
out of his treasure, felt that what his friend had 
said was true. . 

■ As the two went back homeward across the 
level space of sand, Tom Chist suddenly stop- 
ped stock still and stood looking about him. 
“’Twas just here,” he said, digging his heel 
down into the sand, “ that they killed the poor 
black man.” 

“And here he lies buried for all time,” said 
Parson Jones ; and as he spoke he dug his cane 
down into the sand. Tom Chist shuddered. 
He would not have been surprised if the ferrule 
of the cane had struck something soft beneath 
that level surface. But it did not, nor was any 
sign of that tragedy ever seen again. For, 
whether the pirates had carried away what they 
had done and buried it elsewhere, or whether 
the storm in blowing the sand had completely 
levelled off and hidden all sign of that trag- 
edy where it was enacted, certain it is that it 
never came to sight again — at least so far as 
88 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


Tom Chist and the Reverend Hillary Jones 
ever knew. 


VII 

This is the story of the treasure-box. All that 
remains now is to conclude the story of Tom 
Chist, and to tell of what came of him in the end. 

He did not go back again to live with old 
Matt Abrahamson. Parson Jones had now 
taken charge of him and his fortunes, and Tom 
did not have to go back to the fisherman’s hut. 

Old Abrahamson talked a great deal about it, 
and would come in his cups and harangue good 
Parson Jones, making a vast protestation of 
what he would do to Tom — if he ever caught 
him — for running away. But Tom on all these 
occasions kept carefully out of his way, and 
nothing came of the old man’s threatenings. 

Tom used to go over to see his foster-mother 
now and then, but always when the old man 
was from home. And Molly Abrahamson used 
to warn him to keep out of her father’s way. 
“He’s in as vile a humor as ever I see, Tom,” 
she said ; “ he sits sulking all day long, and ’tis 
my belief he’d kill ye if he caught ye.” 

39 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Of course Tom said nothing, even to her, 
about the treasure, and he and the reverend 
gentleman kept the knowledge thereof to them- 
selves. About three weeks later Parson Jones 
managed to get him shipped aboard of a vessel 
bound for New York town, and a few days later 
Tom Chist landed at that place. He had never 
been in such a town before, and he could not 
sufficiently wonder and marvel at the number 
of brick houses, at the multitude of people 
coming and going along the fine, hard, earthen 
sidewalk, at the shops and the stores where 
goods hung in the windows, and, most of all, 
the fortifications and the battery at the point, 
at the rows of threatening cannon, and at the 
scarlet-coated sentries pacing up and down 
the ramparts. All this was very wonderful, 
and so were the clustered boats riding at anchor 
in the harbor. It was like a new world, so 
different was it from the sand-hills and the sedgy 
levels of Henlopen. 

Tom Chist took up his lodgings at a coffee- 
house near to the town-hall, and thence he sent 
by the post-boy a letter written by Parson Jones 
to Master Chillingsworth. In a little while the 
boy returned with a message, asking Tom to 
90 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


come up to Mr. Chillingsworth’s house that 
afternoon at two o’clock. 

Tom went thither with a great deal of trepi- 
dation, and his heart fell away altogether when 
he found it a fine, grand brick house, three sto- 
ries high, and with wrought-iron letters across 
the front. 

The counting-house was in the same building ; 
but Tom, because of Mr. Jones’s letter, was 
conducted directly into the parlor, where the 
great rich man was awaiting his coming. He 
was sitting in a leather-covered arm-chair, smok- 
ing a pipe of tobacco, and with a bottle of fine 
old Madeira close to his elbow. 

Tom had not had a chance to buy a new suit 
of clothes yet, and so he cut no very fine figure 
in the rough dress he had brought with him from 
Henlopen. Nor did Mr. Chillings worth seem 
to think very highly of his appearance, for he 
sat looking sideways at Tom as he smoked. 

“Well, my lad,” he said; “and what is this 
great thing you have to tell me that is so 
mightily wonderful? I got what’s-his-name — 
Mr. Jones’s — letter, and now I am ready to 
hear what you have to say.” 

But if he thought but little of his visitor’s 
91 


STOLEN TREASURE 


appearance at first, he soon changed his senti- 
ments towards him, for Tom had not spoken 
twenty words when Mr. Chillingsworth’s whole 
aspect changed. He straightened himself up 
in his seat, laid aside his pipe, pushed away his 
glass of Madeira, and bade Tom take a chair. 

He listened without a word as Tom Chist told 
of the buried treasure, of how he had seen the 
poor negro murdered, and of how he and Par- 
son Jones had recovered the chest again. Only 
once did Mr. Chillings worth interrupt the nar- 
rative. “And to think,” he cried, “that the 
villain this very day walks about New York 
town as though he were an honest man, ruffling 
it with the best of us! But if we can only get 
hold of these log-books you speak of. Go on; 
tell me more of this.” 

When Tom Chist’s narrative was ended, Mr. 
Chillingsworth’s bearing was as different as 
daylight is from dark. He asked a thousand 
questions, all in the most polite and gracious 
tone imaginable, and not only urged a glass of 
his fine old Madeira upon Tom, but asked him to 
stay to supper. There was nobody to be there, 
he said, but his wife and daughter. 

Tom, all in a panic at the very thought of the 
92 


TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 


two ladies, sturdily refused to stay even for the 
dish of tea Mr. Chillingsworth offered him. 

He did not know that he was destined to stay 
there as long as he should live. 

“And now,” said Mr. Chillingsworth, “tell 
me about yourself.” 

“ I have nothing to tell, your honor,” said Tom, 
“except that I was washed up out of the sea.” 

“Washed up out of the sea!” exclaimed Mr. 
Chillingsworth. “ Why, how was that ? Come, 
begin at the beginning, and tell me all.” 

Thereupon Tom Chist did as he was bidden, 
beginning at the very beginning and telling 
everything just as Molly Abrahamson had often 
told it to him. As he continued, Mr. Chillings- 
worth *s interest changed into an appearance of 
stronger and stronger excitement. Suddenly he 
jumped up out of his chair and began to walk 
up and down the room. 

“Stop! stop!” he cried out at last, in the 
midst of something Tom was saying. “Stop! 
stop! Tell me; do you know the name of the 
vessel that was wrecked, and from which you 
were washed ashore ?” 

“IVe heard it said,” said Tom Chist, “ ’twas 
the Bristol Merchant” 


93 


STOLEN TREASURE 


“ I knew it! I knew it!” exclaimed the great 
man, in a loud voice, flinging his hands up into 
the air. “ I felt it was so the moment you began 
the story. But tell me this, was there nothing 
found with you with a mark or a name upon it ?” 

“There was a kerchief,” said Tom, “marked 
with a T and a C.” 

“Theodosia Chillingsworth!” cried out the 
merchant. “ I knew it ! I knew it ! Heavens ! 
to think of anything so wonderful happening as 
this ! Boy ! boy ! dost thou know who thou art ? 
Thou art my own brother's son. His name was 
Oliver Chillingsworth, and he was my partner 
in business, and thou art his son.” Then he 
ran out into the entryway, shouting and calling 
for his wife and daughter to come. 

So Tom Chist — or Thomas Chillingsworth, as 
he now was to be called — did stay to supper, 
after all. 

This is the story, and I hope you may like it. 
For Tom Chist became rich and great, as was 
to be supposed, and he married his pretty 
cousin Theodosia (who had been named for his 
own mother, drowned in the Bristol Merchant). 

94 


‘4 

TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX 

He did not forget his friends, but had Parson 
Jones brought to New York to live. 

As to Molly and Matt Abrahamson, they both 
enjoyed a pension of ten pounds a year for as 
long as they lived ; for now that all was well with 
him, Tom bore no grudge against the old fisher- 
man for all the drubbings he had suffered. 

The treasure-box was brought on to New York, 
and if Tom Chist did not get all the money there 
was in it (as Parson Jones had opined he would) 
he got at least a good big lump of it. 

And it is my belief that those log-books did 
more to get Captain Kidd arrested in Boston 
town and hanged in London than anything else 
that was brought up against him. 


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THE GHOST OP CAPTAIN BRAND 

Being a Narrative of Certain Extraordinary Ad- 
ventures that Befell Barnahy True, Esquire, of 
the Town of New York, in the Year 1753. 

I 

I T is not so easy to tell why discredit should 
be cast upon a man because of something 
his grandfather may have done amiss, but the 
world, which is never over-nice in its discrim- 
ination as to where to lay the blame, is often 
pleased to make the innocent suffer instead of 
the guilty. 

Barnaby True was a good, honest boy, as 
boys go, but yet was he not ever allowed al- 
together to forget that his grandfather had 
been that very famous pirate. Captain William 
Brand, who, after so many marvellous ad- 
ventures (if one may believe the catchpenny 
99 




STOLEN TREASURE 


stories and ballads that were writ about him), 
was murdered in Jamaica by Captain John 
Malyoe, the commander of his own consort, 
the Adventure galley. 

It hath never been denied, that ever I heard, 
that up to the time of Captain Brand’s being 
commissioned against the South Sea pirates, he 
had always been esteemed as honest, reputable 
a sea-captain as could be. 

When he started out upon that adventure 
it was with a ship, the Royal Sovereign, fitted 
out by some of the most decent merchants of 
New York. Governor Van Dam himself had 
subscribed to the adventure, and himself had 
signed Captain Brand’s . ommission. So, if the 
imfortunate man went astray, he must have 
had great temptation to do so; many others 
behaving no better when the opportunity of- 
fered in th se far-away seas, when so many 
rich purchases might very easily be taken and 
no one the wiser. 

To be sure those stories and ballads made our 
captain to be a most wicked, profane wretch; 
and if he were, why God knows he suffered and 
paid for it, for he laid his bones in Jamaica, and 
never saw his home or his wife or his daughter 

lOO 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


after he had sailed away on the Royal Sovereign 
on that long, misfortunate voyage, leaving his 
family behind him in New York to the care of 
strangers. 

At the time when Captain Brand so met his 
fate in Port Royal Harbor he had increased his 
flotilla to two vessels — the Royal Sovereign 
(which was the vessel that had been fitted 
out for him in New York, a fine brigantine 
and a good sailer), and the Adventure galley, 
which he had captured somewhere in the South 
Seas. This latter vessel he placed in command 
of a certain John Malyoe whom he had picked 
up no one knows where — a young man of very 
good family in England, who had turned red- 
handed pirate. This man, who took no more 
thought of a human life than he would of a 
broom straw, was he who afterwards murdered 
Captain Brand, as you shall presently hear. 

With these two vessels, the Royal Sovereign 
and the Adventure^ Captain Brand and Captain 
Malyoe swept the Mozambique Channel as clear 
as a boatswain’s whistle, and after three years 
of piracy, having gained a great booty of gold 
and silver and pearls, sailed straight for the 
Americas, making first the island of Jamaica 


lOI 


STOLEN TREASURE 


and the harbor of Port Royal, where they 
dropped anchor to wait for news from home. 

But by this time the authorities had been so 
stirred up against our pirates that it became 
necessary for them to hide their booty until 
such time as they might make their peace with 
the Admiralty Courts at home. So one night 
Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe, with two 
others of the pirates, went ashore with two great 
chests of treasure, which they buried somewhere 
on the banks of the Cobra River near the place 
where the old Spanish fort had stood. 

What happened after the treasure was thus 
buried no one may tell. Twas said that 
Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe fell a- 
quarrelling and that the upshot of the matter 
was that Captain Malyoe shot Captain Brand 
through the head, and that the pirate who was 
with him served Captain Brand’s companion 
after the same fashion with a pistol bullet 
through the body. 

After that the two murderers returned to 
their vessel, the Adventure galley, and sailed 
away, carrying the bloody secret of the buried 
treasure with them. 

But this double murder of Captain Brand and 


102 



“captain malyoe shot captain brand through the 

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HEAD 












THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


his companion happened, you are to understand, 
some twenty years before the time of this story, 
and while our hero was but one year old. So 
now to our present history. 

It is a great pity that any one should have 
a grandfather who ended his days in such a 
sort as this; but it was no fault of Barnaby 
True’s, nor could he have done anything to pre- 
vent it, seeing he was not even born into the 
world at the time that his grandfather turned 
pirate, and that he was only one year old when 
Captain Brand so met his death on the Co- 
bra River. Nevertheless, the boys with whom 
he went to school never tired of calling him ‘Ti- 
rate,” and would sometimes sing for his benefit 
that famous catchpenny ballad beginning thus : 

“Oh! my name was Captain Brand, 
A-sailing, 

And a-sailing; 

Oh! my name was Captain Brand, 
A-sailing free. 

Oh! my name was Captain Brand, 

And I sinned by sea and land, 

For I broke God’s just command, 
A-sailing free.” 

’Twas a vile thing to sing at the grandson of 
so unfortunate a man, and oftentimes Barnaby 
103 


STOLEN TREASURE 


True would double up his little fists and would 
fight his tormentors at great odds, and would 
sometimes go back home with a bloody nose 
or a bruised eye to have his poor mother cry 
over him and grieve for him. 

Not that his days were all of teasing and 
torment, either; for if his comrades did some- 
times treat him so, why then there were other 
times when he and they were as great friends 
as could be, and used to go a-swimming together 
in the most amicable fashion where there was 
a bit of sandy strand below the little bluff along 
the East River above Fort George. 

There was a clump of wide beech-trees at 
that place, with a fine shade and a place to lay 
their clothes while they swam about, splashing 
with their naked white bodies in the water. 
At these times Master Barnaby would bawl as 
lustily and laugh as loud as though his grand- 
father had been the most honest ship-chandler 
in the town, instead of a bloody-handed pirate 
who had been murdered in his sins. 

Ah! It is a fine thing to look back to the 
days when one was a boy! Barnaby may 
remember how, often, when he and his com- 
panions were paddling so in the water, the 
IQ4 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


soldiers off duty would come up from the fort 
and would maybe join them in the water, others, 
perhaps, standing in their red coats on the 
shore, looking on and smoking their pipes of 
tobacco. 

Then there were other times when maybe 
the very next day after our hero had fought 
with great valor with his fellows he would go 
a-rambling with them up the Bouwerie Road 
with the utmost friendliness; perhaps to help 
them steal cherries from some old Dutch farmer, 
forgetting in such an adventure what a thief 
his own grandfather had been. 

But to resume our story. 

When Barnaby True was between sixteen 
and seventeen years old he was taken into 
employment in the counting-house of his step- 
father, Mr. Roger Hartright, the well-known 
West Indian merchant, a most respectable man 
and one of the kindest and best of friends that 
anybody could have in the world. 

This good gentleman had courted the favor 
of Barnaby ’s mother for a long time before he 
had married her. Indeed, he had so courted 
her before she had ever thought of marrying 
Jonathan True. But he not venturing to ask 
105 


STOLEN TREASURE 


her in marriage, and she being a brisk, hand- 
some woman, she chose the man who spoke 
out his mind, and so left the silent lover out in 
the cold. But so soon as she was a widow and 
free again, Mr. Hartright resumed his wooing, 
and so used to come down every Tuesday and 
Friday evening to sit and talk with her. Among 
Barnaby True’s earliest memories was a recol- 
lection of the good, kind gentleman sitting in 
old Captain Brand’s double-nailed arm-chair, 
the sunlight shining across his knees, over 
which he had spread a great red silk handker- 
chief, while he sipped a dish of tea with a dash 
of rum in it. He kept up this habit of visiting 
the Widow True for a long time before he could 
fetch himself to the point of asking anything 
more particular of her, and so Barnaby was 
nigh fourteen years old before Mr. Hartright 
married her, and so became our hero’s dear and 
honored foster-father. 

It was the kindness of this good man that 
not only found a place for Barnaby in the 
counting-house, but advanced him so fast that, 
against our hero was twenty-one years old, he 
had made four voyages as supercargo to the 
West Indies in Mr. Hartright ’s ship, the Belle 
io6 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


Helen, and soon after he was twenty-one under- 
took a fifth. 

Nor was it in any such subordinate position 
as mere supercargo that he sailed upon these 
adventures, but rather as the confidential agent 
of Mr. [Hartright, who, having no likelihood 
of children of his own, was jealous to advance 
our hero to a position of trust and respon- 
sibility in the counting-house, and so would 
have him know all the particulars of the bus- 
iness and become more intimately acquainted 
with the correspondents and agents through- 
out those parts of the West Indies where the 
affairs of the house were most active. He would 
give to Barnaby the best sort of letters of intro- 
duction, so that the correspondents of Mr. Hart- 
right throughout those parts, seeing how that 
gentleman had adopted our hero’s interests as 
his own, were always at considerable pains to 
be very polite and obliging in showing every 
attention to him. 

Especially among these gentlemen through- 
out the West Indies may be mentioned Mr. 
Ambrose Greenfield, a merchant of excellent 
standing who lived at Kingston, Jamaica. This 
gentleman was very particular to do all that 
107 


STOLEN TREASURE 


he could to make our hero’s stay in these parts 
as agreeable and pleasant to him as might be. 

Mr. Greenfield is here spoken of with a 
greater degree of particularity than others who 
might as well be remarked upon, because, as 
the reader shall presently discover for himself, 
it was through the offices of this good friend 
that our hero first became acquainted, not only 
with that lady who afterwards figured with such 
conspicuousness in his affairs, but also with a 
man who, though graced with a title, was per- 
haps the greatest villain who ever escaped a 
just fate upon the gallows. 

So much for the history of Barnaby True up 
to the beginning of this story, without which 
you shall hardly be able to understand the 
purport of those most extraordinary advent- 
ures that afterwards befell him, nor the logic 
of their consequence after they had occurred. 


II 

Upon the occasion of our hero’s fifth voyage 
into the West Indies he made a stay of some 
six or eight weeks at Kingston, in the island 
to8 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


of Jamaica, and it was at that time that the 
first of those extraordinary adventures befell 
him, concerning which this narrative has to 
relate. 

It was Barnaby’s habit, when staying at 
Kingston, to take lodging with a very decent, 
respectable widow, by name Mrs. Anne Bolles, 
who, with three extremely agreeable and pleas- 
ant daughters, kept a very clean and well- 
served house for the accommodation of stran- 
gers visiting that island. 

One morning as he sat sipping his coffee, clad 
only in loose cotton drawers and a jacket of 
the same material, and with slippers upon his 
feet (as is the custom in that country, where 
every one endeavors to keep as cool as may be) , 
Miss Eliza, the youngest of the three daughters 
— a brisk, handsome miss of sixteen or seven- 
teen — came tripping into the room and handed 
him a sealed letter, which she declared a stran- 
ger had just left at the door, departing incon- 
tinently so soon as he had eased himself of 
that commission. 

You may conceive of Barnaby’s astonish- 
ment when he opened the note and read the 
remarkable words that here follow: 

109 


STOLEN TREASURE 


“Mr. Barnaby True. 

“ Sir, — ^Though you don’t know me, I know you, 
and I tell you this: if you will be at Pratt’s Ordinary 
on Friday next at eight o’clock in the evening, and 
will accompany the man who shall say to you, ‘ The 
Royal Sovereign is come in,* you shall learn of some- 
thing the most to your advantage that ever befell you. 
Sir, keep this note and give it to him who shall ad- 
dress those words to you, so to certify that you are 
the man he seeks. Sir, this is the most important thing 
that can concern you, so you will please say nothing 
to nobody about it.’’ 

Such was the wording of the note which 
was writ in as cramped and villanous hand- 
writing as our hero ever beheld, and which, 
excepting his own name, was without address, 
and which possessed no superscription what- 
ever. 

The first emotion that stirred Barnaby True 
was one of extreme and profound astonish- 
ment; the second thought that came into his 
mind was that maybe some witty fellow — of 
whom he knew a good many in that place, and 
wild, mad rakes they were as ever the world 
beheld — ^was attempting to play off a smart, 
witty jest upon him. Indeed, Miss Eliza Bolles, 
who was of a lively, mischievous temper, was 
not herself above playing such a prank should 


no 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


the occasion offer. With this thought in his 
mind Barnaby inquired of her with a good deal 
of particularity concerning the appearance and 
condition of the man who had left the note, to 
all of which Miss replied with so straight a face 
and so candid an air that he could no longer 
suspect her of being concerned in any trick 
against him, and so eased his mind of any such 
suspicion. The bearer of the note, she in- 
formed him, was a tall, lean man, with a red 
neckerchief tied around his neck and with 
copper buckles to his shoes, and he had the 
appearance of a sailor-man, having a great 
queue of red hair hanging down his back. But, 
Lord! what was such a description as that 
in a busy seaport town full of scores of men 
to fit such a likeness? Accordingly, our hero 
put the note away into his wallet, determin- 
ing to show it to his good friend Mr. Green- 
field that evening, and to ask his advice 
upon it. 

This he did, and that gentleman’s opinion 
was the same as his: to wit, that some wag was 
minded to play off a hoax upon him, and that 
the matter of the letter was all nothing but 
smoke. 


Ill 


STOLEN TREASURE 


III 

Nevertheless, though Barnaby was thus con- 
firmed in his opinion as to the nature of the 
communication he had received, he yet de- 
termined in his own mind that he would see the 
business through to the end and so be at Pratt’s 
Ordinary, as the note demanded, upon the day 
and at the time appointed therein. 

Pratt’s Ordinary was at that time a very 
fine and famous place of its sort, with good 
tobacco and the best rum in the West Indies, 
and had a garden behind it that, sloping down 
to the harbor front, was planted pretty thick 
with palms and ferns, grouped into clusters with 
flowers and plants. Here were a number of 
tables, some in little grottos, like our Vauxhall 
in New York, with red and blue and white 
paper lanterns hung among the foliage. Thither 
gentlemen and ladies used sometimes to go of 
an evening to sit and drink lime-juice and 
sugar and water (and sometimes a taste of 
something stronger), and to look out across the 
water at the shipping and so to enjoy the cool 
of the day. 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


Thither, accordingly, oiir hero went a little 
before the time appointed in the note, and, 
passing directly through the Ordinary and to 
the garden beyond, chose a table at the lower 
end and close to the water’s edge, where he 
could not readily be seen by any one coming into 
the place, and yet where he could easily view 
whoever should approach. Then, ordering some 
rum and water and a pipe of tobacco, he com- 
posed himself to watch for the arrival of 
those witty fellows whom he suspected would 
presently come thither to see the end of their 
prank and to enjoy his confusion. 

The spot was pleasant enough, for the land 
breeze, blowing strong and cool, set the leaves 
of the palm-tree above his head to rattling and 
clattering continually against the darkness of 
the sky, where, the moon then being half full, 
they shone every now and then like blades of 
steel. The waves, also, were splashing up 
against the little landing-place at the foot of 
the garden, sounding mightily pleasant in the 
dusk of the evening, and sparkling all over the 
harbor where the moon caught the edges of 
the water. A great many vessels were lying 
at anchor in their ridings, with the dark, pro- 

113 


8 


STOLEN TREASURE 


digious form of a man-of-war looming up above 
them in the moonlight. 

There our hero sat for the best part of an 
hour, smoking his pipe of tobacco and sipping 
his rum and water, yet seeing nothing of those 
whom he suspected might presently come thith- 
er to laugh at him. 

It was not far from half after the hour when a 
row-boat came suddenly out of the night and 
pulled up to the landing-place at the foot of the 
garden, and three or four men came ashore in 
the darkness. They landed very silently and 
walked up the garden pathway without saying 
a word, and, sitting down at an adjacent table, 
ordered rum and water and began drinking 
among themselves, speaking every now and 
then a word or two in a tongue that Barnaby 
did not well understand, but which, from cer- 
tain phrases they let fall, he suspected to be 
Portuguese. Our hero paid no great attention 
to them, till by-and-by he became aware that 
they had fallen to whispering together and were 
regarding him very curiously. He felt himself 
growing very uneasy under this observation, 
which every moment grew more and more par- 
ticular, and he was just beginning to suspect 
114 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


that this interest concerning himself might have 
somewhat more to do with him than mere idle 
curiosity, when one of the men, who was plain- 
ly the captain of the party, suddenly says to 
hiru, “How now, messmate; won’t you come 
and have a drop of drink with us?” 

At this address Barnaby instantly began to 
be aware that the affair he had come upon was 
indeed no jest, as he had supposed it to be, but 
that he had walked into what promised to be a 
very pretty adventure. Nevertheless, not wish- 
ing to be top hasty in his conclusions, he an- 
swered very civilly that he had drunk enpugh 
already, and that more would only heat his 
blood. 

“Wpll,” says the stranger, “I may be mis- 
took, but I beljeve you are Mr. Barnaby True.” 

“You are right, sir, and that is my name,” 
acknowledged Barnaby. “But still I cannot 
guess how that may concern you, nor why it 
should be a reason for my drinking with you.” 

^'That I will presently tell you,” says the 
stranger, very composedly. “Your name con- 
cerns me because I was sent here to tell Mr. 
Barnaby True that 'the Royal Sovereign is 
come in.' ” 

115 


STOLEN TREASURE 


To be sure our hero’s heart jumped into his 
throat at those words. His pulse began beat- 
ing at a tremendous rate, for here, indeed, was 
an adventure suddenly opening to him such as 
a man may read about in a book, but which he 
may hardly expect to befall him in the real 
happenings of his life. Had he been a wiser 
and an older man he might have declined the 
whole business, instead of walking blindly into 
that of which he could see neither the begin- 
ning nor the ending ; but being barely one-and- 
twenty years of age, and possessing a sanguine 
temper and an adventurous disposition that 
would have carried him into almost anything 
that possessed a smack of uncertainty or dan- 
ger, he contrived to say, in a pretty easy tone 
(though God knows how it was put on for the 
occasion) : 

“ Well, if that be so, and if the Royal Sovereign 
is indeed come in, why, then. I’ll join you, since 
you are so kind as to ask me.” Therewith he 
arose and went across to the other table, carry- 
ing his pipe with him, and sat down and began 
smoking, with all the appearance of ease he 
could command upon the occasion. 

At this the other burst out a-laughing. 

ii6 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


“Indeed,” says he, “you are a cool blade, and 
a chip of the old block. But harkee, young 
gentleman,” and here he fell serious again. 
“This is too weighty a business to chance any 
mistake in a name. I believe that you are, as 
you say, Mr. Barnaby True ; but, nevertheless, 
to make perfectly sure, I must ask you first to 
show me a note that you have about you and 
which you are instructed to show to me.” 

“Very well,” said Barnaby; “I have it here 
safe and sound, and you shall see it.” And 
thereupon and without more ado he drew 
out his wallet, opened it, and handed the other 
the mysterious note which he had kept care- 
fully by him ever since he had received it. 
His interlocutor took the paper, and drawing to 
him the candle, burning there for the con- 
venience of those who would smoke tobacco, 
began immediately reading it. 

This gave Barnaby True a moment or two 
to look at him. He was a tall, lean man with 
a red handkerchief tied around his neck, with a 
queue of red hair hanging down his back, and 
with copper buckles on his shoes, so that 
Barnaby True could not but suspect that he 
was the very same man who had given the 
117 


STOLEN TREASURE 


note to Miss Eliza Bolles at the door of his 
lodging-house. 

“ ’Tis all right and straight and as it should 
be,” the other said, after he had so exarrtitied 
the note. “And now that the paper is read” 
(suiting his action to his words), ‘‘ I’ll just burn 
it for safety’s sake.” 

And so he did, twisting it up and setting it to 
the flame of the candle. “And now,” he said, 
continuing his address, “I’ll tell you what I 
am here for. I was sent to ask if you’re man 
enough to take your life in your hands and to 
go with me in that boat down yonder at the 
foot of the garden. Say ‘Yes,’ and we’ll start 
away without wasting more time, for the devil 
is ashore here at Jamaica — though you don’t 
know what that means — and if he gets ahead 
of us, why then we may whistle for what we 
are after, for all the good ’twill do us. Say 
‘No,’ and I go away, atid I promise you you 
shall never be troubled more in this sort of a 
way. So now speak up plain, young geritle- 
man, and tell us what is your wish in this 
business, and whether you will adventure any 
further or no.” 

If our hero hesitated it was not for long, 

ii8 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


and when he spoke up it was with a voice as 
steady as could be. 

“To be sure I’m man enough to go with 
you,*’ says he; “and if you mean me any harm 
I can look out for myself; and if I can’t, then 
here is something can look out for me.” And 
therewith he lifted up the flap of his pocket 
and showed the butt of a pistol he had fetched 
with him when he had set out from his lodging- 
house that evening. 

At this the other burst out a-laughing for a 
second time. “Come,” says he; “you are in- 
deed of right mettle, and I like your spirit. 
All the same, no one in all the world means you 
less ill than I, and so, if you have to use that 
barker, ’twill not be upon us who are your 
friends, but only upon one who is more wicked 
than the devil himself. So now if you are pre- 
pared and have made up your mind and are 
determined to see this affair through to the 
end, ’tis time for us to be away.” Whereupon, 
our hero indicating his acquiescence, his inter- 
locutor and the others (who had not spoken a 
single word for all this time, rose together from 
the table, and the stranger having paid the 
scores of all, they went down together to the 
119 


STOLEN TREASURE 


boat that lay plainly awaiting their coming at 
the bottom of the garden. 

Thus coming to it, our hero could see that it 
was a large yawl-boat manned by half a score 
of black men for rowers, and that there were 
two lanterns in the stern -sheets, and three or 
four shovels. 

The man who had conducted the conversa- 
tion with Barnaby True for all this time, and 
who was, as has been said, plainly the captain 
of the expedition, stepped immediately down 
into the boat ; our hero followed, and the others 
followed after him; and instantly they were 
seated the boat shoved off and the black men 
began pulling straight out into the harbor, 
and so, at some distance away, around under 
the stern of the man-of-war. 

Not a word was spoken after they had thus 
left the shore, and they might all have been 
so many spirits for the silence of the party. 
Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts 
to talk (and serious enough thoughts they were 
by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at 
every turn, and press-gangs to carry him off 
so that he might never be heard of again). 
As for the others, they did not seem to choose 


120 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


to say anything now that they had been fairly 
embarked upon their enterprise, and so the 
crew pulled away for the best part of an hour, 
the leader of the expedition directing the course 
of the boat straight across the harbor, as 
though towards the mouth of the Cobra River. 
Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby 
could after a while see for himself, by the low 
point of land with a great, long row of cocoa- 
nut-palms growing upon it (the appearance of 
which he knew very well) , which by-and-by be- 
gan to loom up from the dimness of the moon- 
light. As they approached the river they found 
the tide was running very violently, so that it 
gurgled and rippled alongside the boat as the 
crew of black men pulled strongly against it. 
Thus rowing slowly against the stream they 
came around what appeared to be either a point 
of land or an islet covered with a thick growth 
of mangrove-trees; though still no one spoke 
a single word as to their destination, or what 
was the business they had in hand. 

The night, now that they had come close to 
the shore, appeared to be full of the noises of 
running tide- water, and the air was heavy with 
the smell of mud and marsh. And over all was 


STOLEN TREASURE 


the whiteness of the moonlight, with few 
stars pricking out here and there in the sky; 
and everything was so strange and rnysteriqus 
and so different from anything that he had 
experienced before that Barnaby could not 
divest himself of the feeling that it was all a 
dream from which at any moment he might 
awaken. As for the town and the Ordinary 
he had quitted such a short time before, so 
different were they from this present experience, 
it was as though they might have concerned 
another life than that which he was then en- 
joying. 

Meantime, the rowers bending to the oars, 
the boat drew slowly around into the open 
water once more. As it did so the leader of 
the expedition of a sudden called put in a loud, 
commanding voice, whereat the black men in- 
stantly ceased rowing and lay on their oars, 
the boat drifting onward into the night. 

At the same moment of time our hero be- 
came aware of another boat coming down the 
river towards where they lay. This other 
boat, approaching thus strangely through the 
darkness, was full of men, sorne of them armed ; 
for even in the distance Barnaby could not but 


122 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


observe that the light of the moon glimmered 
now and then as upon the barrels of muskets or 
pistols. This threw him into a good deal of 
disquietude of mind, for whether they or this 
boat were friends or enemies, or as to what was 
to happen next, he was altogether in the dark. 

Upon this point, however, he was not left 
very lorlg in doubt, for the oarsmen of the 
approaching boat continuing to row steadily 
onward till they had come pretty close to 
Barnaby and his companions, a man who sat 
in the stern suddenly stood up, and as thfey 
passed by shook a cane at Barnaby ’s companion 
with a most threatening and angry gesture. 
At the same moment, the moonlight shining 
full upon him, Barnaby could s^e him as plain 
as daylight— a large, stout gentleman with a 
found ,red fnce, and clad in a fine, laced coat 
of red cloth. In the stern of the boat near by 
him was a box or chest about the bigness of a 
middle-sized travelling-trunk, but covered all 
over with cakes of sand and dirt. In the act of 
passing, the gentleman, still standing, pointed 
at this chest with his cane— an elegant gold- 
headed staff — and roared out in a loiid voice: 
“Are you come after this, Abram Dowling.? 

123 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Then come and take it.” And thereat, as 
he sat down again, burst out a-laughing as 
though what he had said was the wittiest jest 
conceivable. 

Either because he respected the armed men 
in the other boat, or else for some reason best 
known to himself, the Captain of our hero’s ex- 
pedition did not immediately reply, but sat as 
still as any stone. But at last, the other boat 
having drifted pretty far away, he suddenly 
found words to shout out after it: “Very well. 
Jack Malyoe! Very well. Jack Malyoe! You’ve 
got the better of us once more. But next time 
is the third, and then it ’ll be our turn, even if 
William Brand must come back from the grave 
to settle with you himself.” 

But to this my fine gentleman in t’other boat 
made no reply except to burst out once more 
into a great fit of laughter. 

There was, however, still another man in the 
stern of the enemy’s boat — a villanous, lean 
man with lantern-jaws, and the top of his head 
as bald as an apple. He held in his hand a 
great pistol, which he flourished about him, 
crying out to the gentleman beside him, “Do 
but give me the word, your honor, and I’ll put 
124 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


another bullet through the son of a sea cook.’^ 
But the other forbade him, and therewith the 
boat presently melted away into the darkness 
of the night and was gone. 

This happened all in a few seconds, so that 
before our hero understood what was passing 
he foimd the boat in which he still sat drifting 
silently in the moonlight (for no one spoke for 
awhile) and the oars of the other boat sounding 
farther and farther away into the distance. 

By-and-by says one of those in Barnaby’s 
boat, in Spanish, “Where shall you go now?” 

At this the leader of the expedition appeared 
suddenly to come back to himself and to find 
his tongue again. “ Go ?” he roared out. “ Go 
to the devil ! Go ? Go where you choose ! Go ? 
Go back again — that’s where we’ll go!” And 
therewith he fell a-cursing and swearing, froth- 
ing at the lips as though he had gone clean 
crazy, while the black men, bending once more 
to their oars, rowed back again across the har- 
bor as fast as ever they could lay oars to the 
water. 

They put Barnaby True ashore below the old 
custom-house, but so bewildered and amazed 
by all that had happened, and by what he had 
125 


STOLEN TREASURE 

seen, and by the names he had heard spojcen, 
that he was only half conscious of the familiar 
things among which he suddenly found himself 
transported. The moonlight and the night ap- 
peared to have taken upon them a new and 
singular aspect, and he walked up the street 
towards his lodging likp one dfunk or in ^ 
dream. For you must remember that “John 
Malyoe” was the captain of the Adventure gal- 
ley — he who had shot Barnaby’s owp grand- 
father — and “Abram Dowling,” I must tell 
you, had been the gunner of the Royal Sovereign 
— he who had been shot at the same timp that 
Captain Brand met his tragical end. And 
yet these names he had heard spoken — the opp 
from one boat, and the other from the other, so 
that he could not but wonder what sort of 
beings they were among 'whom he had fallen. 

As to that box covered all over with mud, he 
could only offer a conjecture as to what it con- 
tained and as to what the finding of it signified. 

But of this our hero said nothing tp any one, 
nor did he tell any one what he suspected, for, 
though he was so youpg in years, he possessed 
a continent disposition inherited from his fa- 
ther (who had been one of ten children born 
126 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


to a poor but worthy Presbyterian minister of 
Bluefield, Connecticut), so it was that not even 
to his good friend Mr. Greenfield did Bamaby 
say a word as to what had happened to him, 
going about his business the next day as though 
nothing of moment had occurred. 

But he was not destined yet to be done with 
those beings among whom he had fallen that 
night; for that which he supposed to be the 
ending of the whole affair was only the be- 
ginning of further adventures that were soon 
to befall him. 


IV 

Mr. Greenfield lived in a fine brick house just 
outside of the town, on the Mona Road. His 
family consisted of a wife and two daughters 
— handsome, lively young ladies with very 
fine, bright teeth that shone whenever they 
laughed, and with a-plenty to say for them- 
selves. To this pleasant house Barnaby True 
was often asked to a family dinner, after which 
he and his good kind host would maybe sit 
upon the veranda, looking out towards the 
mountain, smokihg their cigarros while the 
127 


STOLEN TREASURE 


young ladies laughed and talked, or played upon 
the guitar and sang. 

A day or two before the Belle Helen sailed 
from Kingston, upon her return voyage to 
New York, Mr. Greenfield stopped Barnaby 
True as he was passing through the office, and 
begged him to come to dinner that night. (For 
within the tropics, you are to know, they break- 
fast at eleven o’clock and take dinner in the 
cool of the evening, because of the heat, and 
not at mid-day, as we do in more temperate 
latitudes). “I would,” says Mr. Greenfield, 
“have you meet Sir John Malyoe and Miss 
Marjorie, who are to be your chief passengers 
for New York, and for whom the state cabin 
and the two state-rooms are to be fitted as here 
ordered” — showing a letter — “for Sir John hath 
arranged,” says Mr. Greenfield, “for the Cap- 
tain’s own state-room.” 

Then, not being aware of Barnaby True’s 
history, nor that Captain Brand was his grand- 
father, the good gentleman — calling Sir John 
“Jack” Malyoe — goes on to tell our hero what 
a famous pirate he had been, and how it was he 
who had shot Captain Brand over t’other side 
of the harbor twenty years before . “ Yes , ” says 
128 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


he, “ ’tis the same Jack Malyoe, though grown 
into repute and importance now, as who would 
not who hath had the good-fortune to fall heir 
to a baronetcy and a landed estate?” 

And so it befell that same night that Barnaby 
True once again beheld the man who had mur- 
dered his own grandfather, meeting him this 
time face to face. 

That time in the harbor he had seen Sir John 
Malyoe at a distance and in the darkness ; now 
that he beheld him closer, it seemed to him 
that he had never seen a countenance more 
distasteful to him in all his life. Not that the 
man was altogether ugly, for he had a good 
enough nose and a fine double chin; but his 
eyes stood out from his face and were red and 
watery, and he winked them continually, as 
though they were always a-smarting. His lips 
were thick and purple-red, and his cheeks mot- 
tled here and there with little clots of veins. 

When he spoke, his voice rattled in his throat 
to such a degree that it made one wish to clear 
one’s own throat to listen to him. So, what 
with a pair of fat, white hands, and that hoarse 
voice, and his swollen face, and his thick lips 
a-sticking out, it appeared to Barnaby True he 

9 129 


STOLEN TREASURE 


had never beheld a countenance that pleased 
him so little. 

But if Sir John Malyoe suited our hero’s 
taste so ill, the granddaughter was in the same 
degree pleasing to him. She had a thin, fair 
skin, red lips, and yellow hair — though it was 
then powdered pretty white for the occasion — 
and the bluest eyes that ever he beheld in all of 
his life. A sweet, timid creature, who appeared 
not to dare so much as to speak a word for 
herself without looking to that great beast, her 
grandfather, for leave to do so, for she would 
shrink and shudder whenever he would speak 
of a sudden to her or direct a glance upon her. 
When she did pluck up sufficient courage to 
say anything, it was in so low a voice that 
Barnaby was obliged to bend his head to hear 
her; and when she smiled she would as like as 
not catch herself short and look up as though 
to see if she did amiss to be cheerful. 

As for Sir John, he sat at dinner and gobbled 
and ate and drank, smacking his lips all the 
while, but with hardly a word of civility either 
to Mr. Greenfield or to Mrs. Greenfield or to 
Barnaby True; but wearing all the while a 
dull, sullen air, as though he would say, “ Your 
130 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


damned victuals and drink are no better than 
they should be, but, such as they are, I must 
eat ’em or eat nothing.” 

It was only after dinner was over and the 
young lady and the two misses off in a corner 
together that Barnaby heard her talk with 
any degree of ease. Then, to be sure, her 
tongue became loose enough, and she prattled 
away at a great rate, though hardly above 
her breath. Then of a sudden her grand- 
father called out, in his hoarse, rattling voice, 
that it was time to go, upon which she stopped 
short in what she was saying and jumped up 
from her chair, looking as frightened as though 
he were going to strike her with that gold-head- 
ed cane of his that he always carried with him. 

Barnaby True and Mr. Greenfield both went 
out to see the two into their coach, where Sir 
John’s man stood holding the lantern. And 
who should he be, to be sure, but that same 
lean villain with bald head who had offered to 
shoot the Captain of Barnaby ’s expedition out 
on the harbor that night! For one of the 
circles of light shining up into his face, Barnaby 
True knew him the moment he clapped eyes 
upon him. Though he could not have rec- 

131 


STOLEN TREASURE 


ognized our hero, he grinned at him in the most 
impudent, familiar fashion, and never so much 
as touched his hat either to him or to Mr. Green- 
field; but as soon as his master and his young 
mistress had entered the coach, banged to the 
door and scrambled up on the seat alongside the 
driver, and so away without a word, but with 
another impudent grin, this time favoring both 
Barnaby and the old gentleman. 

Such were Sir John Malyoe and his man, and 
the ill opinion our hero conceived of them was 
only confirmed by further observation. 

The next day Sir John Malyoe ’s travelling- 
cases began to come aboard the Belle Helen, 
and in the afternoon that same lean, villanous 
man-servant comes skipping across the gang- 
plank as nimble as a goat, with two black men 
behind him lugging a great sea-chest. “ What !’' 
he cries out, “and so you is the supercargo, is 
you ? Why, to be sure, I thought you was more 
account when I saw you last night a-sitting 
talking with his honor like his equal. Well, 
no matter,” says he, “ ’tis something to have a 
brisk, genteel young fellow for a supercargo. 
So come, my hearty, lend a hand and help me 
set his honor’s cabin to rights.” 

132 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


What a speech was this to endure from such 
a fellow! What with our hero’s distaste for the 
villain, and what with such odious familiarity, 
you may guess into what temper so impudent 
an address must have cast him. Says he, 
“You’ll find the steward in yonder, and he’ll 
show you the cabin Sir John is to occupy.” 
Therewith he turned and walked away with 
prodigious dignity, leaving the other standing 
where he was. 

As he went below to his own state-room he 
could not but see, out of the tail of his eye, that 
the fellow was still standing where he had left 
him, regarding him with a most evil, malevolent 
countenance, so that he had the satisfaction of 
knowing that he had an enemy aboard for that 
voyage who was not very likely to forgive or 
forget what he must regard as so mortifying a 
slight as that which Bamaby had put upon him. 

The next day Sir John Malyoe himself came 
aboard, accompanied by his granddaughter, 
and followed by his man, and he followed 
again by four black men, who carried among 
them two trunks, not large in size, but vastly 
heavy in weight. Towards these two trunks 
Sir John and his follower devoted the utmost 
133 


STOLEN TREASURE 


solicitude and care to see that they were prop- 
erly carried into the cabin he was to occupy. 
Barnaby True was standing in the saloon as 
they passed close by him ; but though Sir John 
looked hard at him and straight in the face, he 
never so much as spoke a single word to our 
hero, or showed by a look or a sign that he 
had ever met him before. At this the serving- 
man, who saw it all with eyes as quick as a cat’s, 
fell to grinning and chuckling to see Barnaby in 
his turn so slighted. 

The young lady, who also saw it, blushed as 
red as fire, and thereupon delivered a courtesy 
to poor Barnaby, with a most sweet and gra- 
cious affability. 

There were, besides Sir John and the young 
lady, but two other passengers who upon this 
occasion took the voyage to New York : the 
Reverend Simon Styles, master of a flourishing 
academy at Spanish Town, and his wife. This 
was a good, worthy couple of an extremely 
quiet disposition, saying little or nothing, but 
contented to sit in the great cabin by the hour 
together reading in some book or other. So, 
what with the retiring humor of the worthy 
pair, and what with Sir John Malyoe’s fancy 
134 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


for staying all the time shut up in his own 
cabin with those two trunks he held so precious, 
it fell upon Bamaby True in great part to show 
that attention to the young lady that the cir- 
cumstances demanded. This he did with a 
great deal of satisfaction to himself — as any 
one may suppose who considers a spirited young 
man of one-and-twenty years of age and a sweet 
and beautiful young miss of seventeen or eigh- 
teen thrown thus together day after day for 
above two weeks. 

Accordingly, the weather being very fair and 
the ship driving freely along before a fine breeze, 
and they having no other occupation than to 
sit talking together all day, gazing at the 
blue sea and the bright sky overhead, it is 
not difficult to conceive of what was to be- 
fall. 

But oh, those days when a man is young and, 
whether wisely or no, fallen into such a transport 
of passion as poor Barnaby True suffered at 
that time! How often during that voyage did 
out hero lie awake in his berth at night, tossing 
this way and that without finding any refresh- 
ment of sleep — perhaps all because her hand 
had touched his, or because she had spoken 

135 


STOLEN TREASURE 


some word to him that had possessed him with 
a ravishing disquietude ? 

All this might not have befallen him had Sir 
John Malyoe looked after his granddaughter 
instead of locking himself up day and night in 
his own cabin, scarce venturing out except to 
devour his food or maybe to take two or three 
turns across the deck before returning again 
to the care of those chests he appeared to hold 
so much more precious than his own flesh and 
blood. 

Nor was it to be supposed that Barnaby 
would take the pains to consider what was to 
become of it all, for what young man so situated 
as he but would be perfectly content to live so 
agreeably in a fool’s paradise, satisfying him- 
self by assigning the whole affair to the future 
to take care of itself. Accordingly, our hero en- 
deavored, and with pretty good success, to put 
away from him whatever doubts might arise in 
his own mind concerning what he was about, 
satisfying himself with making his conversation 
as agreeable to his companion as it lay in his 
power to do. 

So the affair continued until the end of the 
whole business came with a suddenness that 
1^6 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


promised for a time to cast our hero into the 
utmost depths of humiliation and despair. 

At that time the Belle Helen was, according 
to Captain Manly’s reckoning, computed that 
day at noon, bearing about five-and-fifty leagues 
northeast-by-east off the harbor of Charleston, 
in South Carolina. 

Nor was our hero likely to forget for many 
years afterwards even the smallest circum- 
stance of that occasion. He may remember 
that it was a mightily sweet, balmy evening, 
the sun not having set above half an hour before, 
and the sky still suffused with a good deal of 
brightness the air being extremely soft and 
mild. He may remember with the utmost 
nicety how they were leaning over the rail of the 
vessel looking oiit towards the westward, she 
fallen mightily quiet as though occupied with 
very serious thoughts. 

Of a sudden she began, without any preface 
whatever, to speak to Barnaby about herself 
and her affairs, in a most confidential manner, 
such as she had never used to him before. She 
told him that she and her grandfather were 
going to New York that they might take pas- 
sage thence to Boston, in Massachusetts, where 

137 


STOLEN TREASURE 


they were to meet her cousin Captain Malyoe, 
who was stationed in garrison at that place. 
Continuing, she said that Captain Malyoe was 
the next heir to the Devonshire estate, and that 
she and he were to be married in the fall. 

You may conceive into what a confusion of 
distress such a confession as this, delivered so 
suddenly, must have cast poor Barnaby. He 
could answer her not a single word, but stood 
staring in another direction than hers, en- 
deavoring to compose himself into some equa- 
nimity of spirit. For indeed it was a sudden, 
terrible blow, and his breath came as hot and 
dry as ashes in his throat. Meanwhile the 
young lady went on to say, though in a mightily 
constrained voice, that she had liked him from 
the very first moment she had seen him, and 
had been very happy for these days she had 
passed in his society, and that she would always 
think of him as a dear friend who had been very 
kind to her, who had so little pleasure in her 
life. 

At last Barnaby made shift to say, though 
in a hoarse and croaking voice, that Captain 
Malyoe must be a very happy man, and that 
if he were in Captain Malyoe ’s place he would 
138 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


be the happiest man in the world. Thereupon, 
having so found his voice, he went on to tell her, 
though in a prodigious confusion and pertur- 
bation of spirit, that he too loved her, and that 
what she had told him struck him to the heart, 
and made him the most miserable, unhappy 
wretch in the whole world. 

She exhibited no anger at what he said, nor 
did she turn to look at him, but only replied, in 
a low voice, that he should not talk so, for that 
it could only be a pain to them both to speak 
of such things, and that whether she would or 
no, she must do everything her grandfather 
bade her, he being indeed a terrible man. 

To this poor Barnaby could only repeat that 
he loved her with all his heart, that he had 
hoped for nothing in his love, but that he was 
now the most miserable man in the world. 

It was at this moment, so momentous to our 
hero, that some one who had been hiding unseen 
nigh them for all the while suddenly moved 
away, and Bamaby, in spite of the gathering 
darkness, could perceive that it was that villain 
man-servant of Sir John Malyoe’s, Nor could 
he but know that the wretch must have over- 
heard all that had been said. 


139 


STOLEN TREASURE 


As he looked he beheld this fellow go straight 
to the great cabin, where he disappeared with a 
cunning leer upon his face, so that our hero 
could not but be aware that the purpose of 
the eavesdropper must be to communicate all 
that he had overheard to his master. At this 
thought the last drop of bitterness was added 
to his trouble, for what could be more dis- 
tressing to any man of honor than to possess 
the consciousness that such a wretch should 
have overheard so sacred a conversation as that 
which he had enjoyed with the young lady. 
She, upon her part, could not have been aware 
that the mtan had listened to what she had been 
saying, for she still continued leaning over the 
rail, and Barnaby remained standing by her 
side, without moving, but so distracted by a 
tumult of many passions that he knew not how 
or where to look. 

After a pretty long time of this silence, the 
young lady looked up to see why her companion 
had not spoken for so great a while, and at that 
very moment Sir John Malyoe comes flinging 
out of the cabin without his hat, but carrying 
his gold-headed cane. He ran straight across 
the deck towards where Barnaby and the 
140 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


young lady stood, swinging his cane this way 
and that with a most furious and threatening 
countenance, while the informer, grinning like 
an ape, followed close at his heels. As Sir John 
approached them, he cried out in so loud a 
voice that all on deck might have heard him, 
“You hussy!” (And all the time, you are to 
remember, he was swinging his cane as though 
he would have struck the young lady, who, 
upon her part, shrank back from him almost 
upon the deck as though to escape such a blow.) 
“You hussy! What do you do here, talking 
with a misbred Yankee supercargo not fit for 
a gentlewoman to wipe her feet upon, and you 
stand there and listen to his fool talk! Go to 
your room, you hussy” — only ’twas something 
worse he called her this time — “before I lay 
this cane across you!” 

You may suppose into what fury such words 
as these, spoken in Bamaby’s hearing, not to 
mention that vile slur set upon himself, must 
have cast our hero. To be sure he scarcely 
knew what he did, but he put his hand against 
Sir John Malyoe’s breast and thrust him back 
most violently, crying out upon him at the same 
time for daring so to threaten a young lady, 
141 


STOLEN TREASURE 


and that for a farthing he would wrench the 
stick out of his hand and throw it overboard. 

A little farther and Sir John would have 
fallen flat upon the deck with the push Barnaby 
gave him. But he contrived, by catching hold 
of the rail, to save his balance. Whereupon, 
having recovered himself, he came running at 
our hero like a wild beast, whirling his cane 
about, and I do believe would have struck him 
(and God knows then what might have hap- 
pened) had not his man-servant caught him and 
held him back. 

“Keep back!” cried out our hero, still mighty 
hoarse. “Keep back! If you strike me with 
that stick I’ll fling you overboard!” 

By this time, what with the sound of loud 
voices and the stamping of feet, some of the 
crew and others aboard were hurrying up to the 
scene of action. At the same time Captain 
Manly and the first mate, Mr. Freesden, came 
running out of the cabin. As for our hero, 
having got set agoing, he was not to be stopped 
so easily. 

“And who are you, anyhow,” he cries, his 
voice mightily hoarse even in his own ears, 
“to threaten to strike me! You may be a 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


bloody pirate, and you may shoot a man from 
behind, as you shot poor Captain Brand on the 
Cobra River, but you won’t dare strike me 
face to face. I know who you are and what 
you are!” 

As for Sir John llalyoe, had he been struck of 
a sudden by palsy, he could not have stopped 
more dead short in his attack upon our hero. 
There he stood, his great, bulging eyes staring 
like those of a fish, his face as purple as a cherry. 
As for Master Informer, Barnaby had the satis- 
faction of seeing that he had stopped his grinning 
by now and was holding his master’s arm as 
though to restrain him from any further act of 
violence. 

By this time Captain Manly had come bus- 
tling up and demanded to know what all the 
disturbance meant. Whereupon our hero cried 
out, still in the extremity of passion: 

“The villain insulted me and insulted the 
young lady ; he threatened to strike me with his 
cane. But he sha’n’t strike me. I know who 
he is and what he is. I know what he’s got in 
his cabin in those two trunks, and I know where 
he found it, and whom it belongs to.” 

At this Captain Manly clapped his hand upon 
143 


STOLEN TREASURE 


our hero’s shoulder and fell to shaking him so 
that he could hardly stand, crying out to him 
the while to be silent. Says he : “ How do you 
dare, an officer of this ship, to quarrel with a 
passenger of mine! Go straight to your cabin, 
and stay there till I give you leave to come out 
again.” 

At this Master Barnaby came somewhat back 
to himself. “ But he threatened to strike me 
with his cane,” he says, “and that I won’t stand 
from any man!” 

“No matter for that,” says Captain Manly, 
very sternly. “Go to your cabin, as I bid 
you, and stay there till I tell you to come out 
again, and when we get to New York I’ll take 
pains to inform your step-father of how you 
have behaved. I’ll have no such rioting as 
this aboard my ship.” 

By this time, as you may suppose, the young 
lady was gone. As for Sir John Malyoe, he 
stood in the light of a lantern, his face that had 
been so red now gone as white as ashes, and if 
a look could kill, to be sure he would have 
destroyed Barnaby True where he stood. 

It was thus that the events of that memorable 
day came to a conclusion. How little did any 
144 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


of the actors of the scene suspect that a por- 
tentous Fate was overhanging them, and was 
so soon to transform all their present circum- 
stances into others that were to be perfectly 
different ! 

And how little did our hero suspect what was 
in store for him upon the morrow, as with hang- 
ing head he went to his cabin, and shutting the 
door upon himself, and flinging himself down 
upon his berth, there yielded himself over to the 
profoundest depths of humiliation and despair. 


V 

From his melancholy meditations Barnaby, 
by-and-by and in spite of himself, began drop- 
ping off into a loose slumber, disturbed by ex- 
travagant dreams of all sorts, in which Sir John 
Malyoe played some important and malignant 
part. 

From one of these dreams he was aroused to 
meet a new and startling fate, by hearing the 
sudden and violent explosion of a pistol-shot 
ring out as though in his ears. This was followed 
immediately by the sound of several other shots 
lo 145 


STOLEN TREASURE 


exchanged in rapid succession as coming from 
the deck above. At the same instant a blow 
of such excessive violence shook the Belle Helen 
that the vessel heeled over before it, and 
Bamaby was at once aware that another craft 
— ^whether by accident or with intention he 
did not know — must have run afoul of them. 

Upon this point, and as to whether or not the 
collision was designed, he was, however, not 
left a moment in doubt, for even as the Belle 
Helen righted to her true keel, there was the 
sound of many footsteps running across the 
deck and down into the great cabin. Then 
proceeded a prodigious uproar of voices, to- 
gether with the struggling of men’s bodies being 
tossed about, striking violently against the 
partitions and bulkheads. At the same instant 
arose a screaming of women’s voices, and one 
voice, that of Sir John Malyoe, crying out as 
in the greatest extremity: “You villains! You 
damned villains!” and with that the sudden 
detonation of a pistol fired into the close space 
of the great cabin. 

Long before this time Barnaby was out in the 
middle of his own cabin. Taking only suf- 
ficient time to snatch down one of the pistols 
146 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


that hung at the head of his berth, he flung 
out into the great cabin, to find it as black as 
night, the lantern slung there having been 
either blown out or dashed out into darkness. 
All was as black as coal, and the gloom was 
filled with a hubbub of uproar and confusion, 
above which sounded continually the shrieking 
of women's voices. Nor had our hero taken 
above a couple of steps before he pitched head- 
long over two or three men struggling together 
upon the deck, falling with a great clatter and 
the loss of his pistol, which, however, he re- 
gained almost immediately. 

What all the uproar portended he could only 
guess, but presently hearing Captain Manly’s 
voice calling out, “You bloody pirate, would 
you choke me to death ?” he became immediate- 
ly aware of what had befallen the Belle Helen, 
and that they had been attacked by some of 
those buccaneers who at that time infested the 
waters of America in prodigious numbers. 

It was with this thought in his mind that, 
looking towards the companionway, he beheld, 
outlined against the darkness of the night 
without, the form of a man’s figure, standing 
still and motionless as a statue in the midst of 
147 


STOLEN TREASURE 

all this tumult, and thereupon, as by some in- 
stinct, knew that that must be the master-maker 
of all this devil’s brew. Therewith, still kneel- 
ing upon the deck, he covered the bosom of that 
figure point-blank, as he supposed, with his 
pistol, and instantly pulled the trigger. 

In the light of the pistol fire, Barnaby had 
only sufficient opportunity to distinguish a 
flat face wearing a large pair of mustachios, a 
cocked hat trimmed with gold lace, a red 
scarf, and brass buttons. Then the darkness, 
very thick and black, again swallowed every- 
thing. 

But if our hero failed to clearly perceive the 
countenance towards which he had discharged 
his weapon, there was one who appeared to have 
recognized some likeness in it, for Sir John 
Malyoe’s voice, almost at Barnaby’s elbow, 
cried out thrice in loud and violent tones, 
“William Brand! William Brandi William 
Brand!” and thereat came the soimd of some 
heavy body falling down upon the deck. 

This was the last that our hero may remember 
of that notable attack, for the next moment 
whether by accident or design he never knew, 
he felt himself struck so terrible a blow upon 
148 


THE, GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


the side of the head, that he instantly swooned 
dead away and knew no more. 


VI 

When Barnaby True came back to his senses 
again, it was to become aware that he was 
being cared for with great skill and nicety, that 
his head had been bathed with cold water, 
and that a bandage was being bound about it 
as carefully as though a chirurgeon was attend- 
ing to him. 

He had been half conscious of people about 
him, but could not immediately recall what had 
happened to him, nor until he had opened his 
eyes to find himself in a perfectly strange cabin 
of narrow dimensions but extremely well fitted 
and painted with white and gold. By the light 
of a lantern shining in his eyes, together with 
the gray of the early day through the dead- 
light, he could perceive that two men were 
bending over him — one, a negro in a striped 
shirt, with a yellow handkerchief aroimd his 
head and silver ear-rings in his ears ; the other, 
a white man, clad in a strange, outlandish dress 
149 


STOLEN TREASURE 


of a foreign make, with great mustachios hang- 
ing down below his chin, and with gold ear-rings 
in his ears. 

It was this last who was attending to Bar- 
naby’s hurt with such extreme care and gentle- 
ness. 

All this Bamaby saw with his first clear con- 
sciousness after his swoon. Then remembering 
what had befallen him, and his head beating as 
though it would split asunder, he shut his eyes 
again, contriving with great effort to keep him- 
self from groaning aloud, and wondering as to 
what sort of pirates these could be, who would 
first knock a man in the head so terrible a blow 
as that which he had suffered, and then take 
such care to fetch him back to life again, and to 
make him easy and comfortable. 

Nor did he open his eyes again, but lay there 
marvelling thus until the bandage was properly 
tied about his head and sewed together. Then 
once more he opened his eyes and looked up to 
ask where he was. 

Upon hearing him speak, his attendants show- 
ed excessive signs of joy, nodding their heads 
and smiling at him as though to reassure him. 
But either because they did not choose to reply, 

150 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


or else because they could not speak English, 
they made no answer, excepting by those signs 
and gestures. The white man, however, made 
several motions that our hero was to arise, and, 
still grinning and nodding his head, pointed 
as though towards a saloon beyond. At the 
same time the negro held up our hero’s coat 
and beckoned for him to put it on. According- 
ly Bamaby, seeing that it was required of him 
to quit the place in which he then lay, arose, 
though with a good deal of effort, and per- 
mitted the negro to help him on with his coat, 
though feeling mightily dizzy and much put 
about to keep upon his legs — his head beating 
fit to split asunder and the vessel rolling and 
pitching at a great rate, as though upon a 
heavy cross-sea. 

So, still sick and dizzy, he went out into what 
he found was, indeed, a fine saloon beyond, 
painted in white and gilt like the cabin he had 
just quitted. This saloon was fitted in the 
most excellent taste imaginable. A table ex- 
tended the length of the room, and a quantity 
of bottles, and glasses clear as crystal, were 
arranged in rows in a hanging rack above. 

But what most attracted our hero’s attention 


STOLEN TREASURE 


was a man sitting with his back to him, his 
figure clad in a rough pea-jacket, and with a 
red handkerchief tied around his throat. His 
feet were stretched under the table out before 
him, and he was smoking a pipe of tobacco with 
all the ease and comfort imaginable. 

As Barnaby came in he turned round, and, 
to the profound astonishment of our hero, pre- 
sented to him in the light of the lantern, the 
dawn shining pretty strong through the sky- 
light, the face of that very man who had con- 
ducted the mysterious expedition that night 
across Kingston Harbor to the Cobra River. 


VII 

This man looked steadily at Barnaby True 
for above half a minute and then burst out 
a-laughing. And, indeed, Barnaby, standing 
there with the bandage about his head, must 
have looked a very droll picture of that as- 
tonishment he felt so profoundly at finding who 
was this pirate into whose hands he had fallen. 
“Well,’' says the other, “and so you be up at 
last, and no great harm done. I’ll be bound. 
152 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


And how does your head feel by now, my 
young master?” 

To this Barnaby made no reply, but, what 
with wonder and the dizziness of his head, seated 
himself at the table over against his interlocutor, 
who pushed a bottle of rum towards him, to- 
gether with a glass from the hanging rack. 

He watched Barnaby fill his glass, and so soon 
as he had done so began immediately by saying : 
“I do suppose you think you were treated 
mightily ill to be so handled last night. Well, 
so you were treated ill enough, though who hit 
you that crack upon the head I know no more 
than a child unborn. Well, I am sorry for the 
way you were handled, but there is this much 
to say, and of that you may feel well assured, 
that nothing was meant to you but kindness, 
and before you are through with us all you 
will believe that without my having to tell 
you so.” 

Here he helped himself to a taste of grog, and 
sucking in his lips went on again with what he 
had to say. “Do you remember,” says he, 
“that expedition of ours in Kingston Harbor, 
and how we were all of us balked that night?” 
And then, without waiting for Barnaby’s reply : 

153 


STOLEN TREASURE 


“And do you remember what I said to that 
villain Jack Malyoe that night as his boat went 
by us? I says to him, ‘Jack Malyoe,’ says I, 
‘you’ve got the better of us once again, but 
next time it will be our turn, even if William 
Brand himself has to come back from the grave 
to settle with you.’ ” 

“I remember something of the sort,” said 
Bamaby, “but I profess I am all in the dark 
as to what you are driving at.” 

At this the other burst out in a great fit of 
laughing. “Very well, then,” said he, “this 
night’s work is only the ending of what was so 
ill begun there. Look yonder ’ ’ — pointing to a 
corner of the cabin — “ and then maybe you will 
be in the dark no longer.” Barnaby turned 
his head and there beheld in the corner of the 
saloon those very two travelling-cases that Sir 
John Malyoe had been so particular to keep in 
his cabin and under his own eyes through all 
the voyage from Jamaica. 

“I’ll show you what is in ’em,” says the 
other, and thereupon arose, and Barnaby with 
him, and so went over to where the two travel- 
ling-cases stood. 

Our hero had a strong enough suspicion as to 
154 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


what the cases contained. But, Lord! what 
were suspicions to what his two eyes beheld 
when that man lifted the lid of one of them — ■ 
the locks thereof having already been forced 
— and, flinging it back, displayed to Barnaby’s 
astonished and bedazzled sight a great treasure 
of gold and silver, some of it tied up in leathern 
bags, to be sure, but so many of the coins, big 
and little, yellow and white, lying loose in the 
cases as to make our hero think that a great 
part of the treasures of the Indies lay there 
before him. 

“Well, and what do you think of that?” said 
the other. “Is it not enough for a man to 
turn pirate for?” and thereupon burst out 
a-laughing and clapped down the lid again. 
Then suddenly turning serious: “Come Master 
Barnaby,” says he. “I am to have some 
very sober talk with you, so fill up your glass 
again and then we will heave at it.” 

Nor even in after years, nor in the light of 
that which afterwards occurred, could Barnaby 
repeat all that was said to him upon that oc- 
casion, for what with the pounding and beating 
of his aching head, and what with the wonder 
of what he had seen, he was altogether in the 

155 


STOLEN TREASURE 

dark as to the greater part of what the other 
told him. That other began by saying that 
Barnaby, instead of being sorry that he was 
William Brand’s grandson, might thank God 
for it; that he (Barnaby) had been watched 
and cared for for twenty years in more ways 
than he would ever know; that Sir John 
Malyoe had been watched also for all that 
while, and that it was a vastly strange thing 
that Sir John Malyoe ’s debts in England and 
Barnaby ’s coming of age should have brought 
them so together in Jamaica — ^though, after all, 
it was all for the best, as Barnaby himself should 
presently see, and thank God for that also. 
For now all the debts against that villain Jack 
Malyoe were settled in full, principal and 
interest, to the last penny, and Barnaby was 
to enjoy it the most of all. Here the fellow 
took a very comfortable sip of his grog, and 
then went on to say with a very cunning and 
knowing wink of the eye that Barnaby was not 
the only passenger aboard, but that there was 
another in whose company he would be glad 
enough, no doubt, to finish the balance of the 
voyage he was now upon. So now, if Barnaby 
was sufficiently composed, he should be in- 
156 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


troduced to that other passenger. Thereupon, 
without waiting for a reply, he incontinently 
arose and, putting away the bottle of rum and 
the glasses, went across the saloon — Barnaby 
watching him all the while like a man in a 
dream — and opened the door of a cabin like that 
which Barnaby had occupied a little while 
before. He was gone only for a moment, for 
almost immediately he came out again ushering 
a lady before him. 

By now the daylight in the cabin was grown 
strong and clear, so that the light shining full 
upon her face, Barnaby True knew her the 
instant she appeared. 

It was Miss Marjorie Malyoe, very white, but 
strangely composed, showing no terror, either 
in her countenance or in her expression. 

It would not be possible for the writer to 
give any clear idea of the circumstances of the 
days that immediately followed, and which, 
within a week, brought Barnaby True and the 
enchanting object of his affections at once to 
the ending of their voyage, and of all these mar- 
vellous adventures. For when, in after times, 
our hero would endeavor to revive a memory 
157 


STOLEN TREASURE 


of the several occurrences that then transpired, 
they all appeared as though in a dream or a 
bewitching phantasm. 

All that he could recall were long days of 
delicious enjoyment followed by nights of 
dreaming. But how enchanting those days! 
How exquisite the distraction of those nights! 

Upon occasions he and his charmer might sit 
together under the shade of the sail for an hour 
at a stretch, he holding her hand in his and 
neither saying a single word, though at times the 
transports of poor Barnaby’s emotions would go 
far to suffocate him with their rapture. As for 
her face at such moments, it appeared sometimes 
to assume a transparency as though of a light 
shining from behind her countenance. 

The vessel in which they found themselves 
was a brigantine of good size and build, but 
manned by a considerable crew, the most strange 
and outlandish in their appearance that Bar- 
naby had ever beheld. For some were white, 
some were yellow, and some were black, and 
all were tricked out with gay colors, and gold 
ear-rings in their ears, and some with long 
itiustachios, and others with handkerchiefs tied 
around their heads. And all these spoke to- 
158 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


gether a jargon of which Barnaby True could 
not understand a single word, but which might 
have been Portuguese from one or two phrases 
he afterwards remembered. Nor did this out- 
landish crew, of God knows what sort of men, 
address any of their conversation either to 
Barnaby or to the young lady. They might 
now and then have looked at him and her 
out of the corners of their yellow eyes, but 
that was all; otherwise they were, indeed, like 
the creatures of a dream. Only he who was 
commander of this strange craft, when he 
would come down into the saloon to mix a 
glass of grog or to light a pipe of tobacco, 
would maybe favor Barnaby with a few words 
concerning the weather or something of the 
sort, and then to go on deck again about his 
business. 

Indeed, it may be affirmed with pretty easy 
security that no such adventure as this ever 
happened before; for here were these two in- 
nocent young creatures upon board of a craft 
that no one, under such circumstances as those 
recounted above, could doubt was a pirate or 
buccaneer, the crew whereof had seen no one 
knows what wicked deeds; yet they two as 
159 


STOLEN TREASURE 


remote from all that and as profoundly occupied 
with the transports of their passion and as 
innocent in their satisfaction thereof as were 
Corydon and Phyllis beside their purling streams 
and flowery meads, with nymphs and satyrs 
caracoling about them. 


VIII 

It is probable that the polite reader of this 
veracious narrative, instead of considering it as 
the effort of the author to set before him a so- 
ber and well-digested history, has been all this 
while amusing himself by regarding it only as 
a fanciful tale designed for his entertainment. 
If this be so, the writer may hardly hope to 
convince him that what is to follow is a serious 
narrative of that which, though never so in- 
genuous in its recapitulation, is an altogether 
inexplicable phenomenon. Accordingly, it is 
with extraordinary hesitation that the scribe 
now invites the confidence of his reader in the 
succinct truth of that which he has to relate. 
It is in brief as follows: 

That upon the last night of this part of his 
i6o 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


voyage, Barnaby True was awakened from 
slumber by flashes of lightning shining into his 
cabin, and by the loud pealing of approaching 
thimder. At the same time observing the sound 
of footsteps moving back and forth as in great 
agitation overhead, and the loud shouting of 
orders, he became aware that a violent squall 
of wind must be approaching the vessel. Being 
convinced of this he arose from his berth, dressed 
quickly, and hurried upon deck, where he found 
a great confusion of men running hither and 
thither and scrambling up and down the rigging 
like monkeys, while the Captain, and one whom 
he had come to know as the Captain’s mate, 
were shouting out orders in a strange foreign 
jargon. 

A storm was indeed approaching with great 
rapidity, a prodigious circle of rain and clouds 
whirling overhead like smoke, while the light- 
ning, every now and then, flashed with intense 
brightness, followed by loud peals of thunder. 

By these flashes of lightning Barnaby ob- 
served that they had made land during the 
night, for in the sudden glare of bright light he 
beheld a mountainous headland and a long 
strip of sandy beach standing out against the 

i6i 


II 


STOLEN TREASURE 


blackness of the night beyond. So much he 
was able to distinguish, though what coast it 
might be he could not tell, for presently an- 
other flash falling from the sky, he saw that 
the shore was shut out by the approaching 
downfall of rain. 

This rain came presently streaming down 
upon them with a great gust of wind and a 
deal of white foam across the water. This vi- 
olent gale of wind suddenly striking the vessel, 
careened it to one side so that for a moment it 
was with much ado that he was able to keep his 
feet at all. Indeed, what with the noise of the 
tempest through the rigging and the flashes of 
lightning and the pealing of the thunder and 
the clapping of an unfurled sail in the darkness, 
and the shouting of orders in a strange language 
by The Captain of the craft, who was running 
up and down like a bedlamite, it was like pan- 
demonium with all the devils of the pit broke 
loose into the night. 

It was at this moment, and Barnaby True was 
holding to the back-stays, when a sudden, pro- 
longed flash of lightning came after a continued 
space of darkness. So sharp and heavy was 
this shaft that for a moment the night was as 
162 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


bright as day, and in that instant occurred 
that which was so remarkable that it hath af- 
forded the title of this story itself. For there, 
standing plain upon the deck and not far from 
the companionway, as though he had just come 
up from below, our hero beheld a figure the 
face of which he had seen so imperfectly once 
before by the flash of his own pistol in the 
darkness. Upon this occasion, however, the 
whole figure was stamped out with intense 
sharpness against the darkness, and Barnaby 
beheld, as clear as day, a great burly man, clad 
in a tawdry tinsel coat, with a cocked hat with 
gold braid upon his head. His legs, with petti- 
coat breeches and cased in great leathern sea- 
boots pulled up to his knees, stood planted wide 
apart as though to brace against the slant of the 
deck. The face our hero beheld to be as white 
as dough, with fishy eyes and a bony forehead, 
on the side of which was a great smear as of 
blood. 

All this, as was said, stood out as sharp and 
clear as daylight in that one flash of lightning, 
and then upon the instant was gone again, as 
though swallowed up into the darkness, while 
a terrible clap of thunder seemed to split the 
163 


V 


STOLEN TREASURE 


very heavens overhead and a strong smell as of 
brimstone filled the air around about. 

At the same moment some voice cried out 
from the darkness, “ William Brand, by God!” 

Then, the rain clapping down in a deluge, 
Barnaby leaped into the saloon, pursued by he 
knew not what thoughts. For if that was in- 
deed the image of old William Brand that he 
had seen once before and now again, then the 
grave must indeed have gaped and vomited 
out its dead into the storm of wind and light- 
ning ; for what he beheld that moment, he hath 
ever averred, he saw as clear as ever he saw his 
hand before his face. 

This is the last account of which there is any 
record when the figure of Captain William Brand 
was beheld by the eyes of a living man. It must 
have occurred just off the Highlands below the 
Sandy Hook, for the next morning when Bar- 
naby True came upon deck it was to find the 
sun shining brightly and the brigantine rid- 
ing upon an even keel, at anchor off Staten 
Island, three or four cable - lengths distance 
from a small village on the shore, and the 
town of New York in plain sight across the 
water. 


164 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 

Twas the last place in the world he had ex- 
pected to see. 


IX 

And, indeed, it did seem vastly strange to lie 
there alongside Staten Island all that day, with 
New York town in plain sight across the water 
and yet so impossible to reach. For whether 
he desired to escape or no, Barnaby True could 
not but observe that both he and the young 
lady were so closely watched that they might 
as well have been prisoners, tied hand and foot 
and laid in the hold, so far as any hope of getting 
away was concerned. 

Throughout that day there was a vast deal 
of mysterious coming and going aboard the 
brigantine, and in the afternoon a sail-boat 
went up to the town, carrying the Captain of 
the brigantine and a great load in the stern 
covered over with a tarpaulin. What was so 
taken up to the town Barnaby did not then 
guess, nor did he for a moment suspect of what 
vast importance it was to be for him. 

About sundown the small boat returned, 
fetching the pirate Captain of the brigantine back 
165 


STOLEN TREASURE 

again. Coming aboard and finding Barnaby 
on deck, the other requested him to come down 
into the saloon for he had a few serious words to 
say to him. In the saloon they found the 
young lady sitting, the broad light of the even- 
ing shining in through the skylight, and making 
it all pretty bright within. 

The Captain commanded Barnaby to be 
seated, whereupon he chose a place alongside 
the young lady. So soon as he had composed 
himself the Captain began very seriously, with 
a preface somewhat thus: “Though you may 
think me the Captain of this brigantine, Master 
Barnaby True, I am not really so, but am under 
orders of a superior whom I have obeyed in all 
these things that I have done.” Having said 
so much as this, he continued his address to say 
that there was one thing yet remaining for him 
to do, and that the greatest thing of all. 

He said that this was something that both 
Barnaby and the young lady were to be called 
upon to perform, and he hoped that they would 
do their part willingly ; but that whether they 
did it willingly or no, do it they must, for those 
also were the orders he had received. 

You may guess how our hero was disturbed 

i66 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


by this prologue. He had found the young 
lady’s hand beneath the table and he now held 
it very closely in his own; but whatever might 
have been his expectations as to the final 
purport of the communications the other was 
about to favor him with, his most extreme ex- 
pectations could not have equalled that which 
was demanded of him. 

“My orders are these,” said his interlocutor, 
continuing: “I am to take you and the young 
lady ashore, and to see that you are married 
before I quit you, and to that end a very good, 
decent, honest minister who lives ashore yonder 
in the village was chosen and hath been spoken 
to, and is now, no doubt, waiting for you to come. 
That is the last thing I am set to do ; so now I 
will leave you and her young ladyship alone to- 
gether for five minutes to talk it over, but be 
quick about it, for whether willing or not, this 
thing must be done.” 

Thereupon he incontinently went away, as 
he had promised, leaving those two alone to- 
gether, our hero like one turned into stone, and 
the young lady, her face turned away, as red as 
fire, as Barnaby could easily distinguish by the 
fading light. 


167 


STOLEN TREASURE 

Nor can I tell what Barnaby said to her, nor 
what words or arguments he used, for so great 
was the distraction of his mind and the tumult 
of his emotions that he presently discovered 
that he was repeating to her over and over 
again that God knew he loved her, and that with 
all his heart and soul, and that there was noth- 
ing in all the world for him but her. After 
which, containing himself sufficiently to con- 
tinue his address, he told her that if she would 
not have it as the man had said, and if she were 
not willing to marry him as she was bidden to 
do, he would rather die a thousand, aye, ten 
thousand, deaths than lend himself to forcing 
her to do such a thing as this. Nevertheless, 
he told her she must speak up and tell him yes 
or no, and that God knew he would give all the 
world if she would say “yes.” 

All this and much more he said in such a 
tumult that he was hardly aware of what he 
was speaking, and she sitting there, as though 
her breath stifled her. Nor did he know what 
she replied to him, only that she would marry 
him. Therewith he took her into his arms 
and for the first time set his lips to hers, in 
such a transport of ecstasy that everything 

j68 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


seemed to his sight as though he were about 
to swoon. 

So when the Captain returned to the saloon 
he found Barnaby sitting there holding her 
hand, she with her face turned away, and he 
so full of joy that the promise of heaven could 
not have made him happier. 

The yawl-boat belonging to the brigantine 
was ready and waiting alongside when they 
came upon deck, and immediately they de- 
scended to it and took their seats. Reaching 
the shore, they landed, and walked up the village 
street in the twilight, she clinging to our hero’s 
arm as though she would faint away. The 
Captain of the brigantine and two other men 
aboard accompanied them to the minister’s 
house, where they found the good man waiting 
for them, smoking his pipe in the warm evening, 
and walking up and down in front of his own 
door. He immediately conducted them into 
the house, where, his wife having fetched a 
candle, and two others from the village being 
present, the good, pious man having asked several 
questions as to their names and their age and 
where they were from, and having added his 
blessing, the ceremony was performed, and the 

l6g 


STOLEN TREASURE 


certificate duly signed by those present from 
the village — the men who had come ashore from 
the brigantine alone refusing to set their hands 
to any paper. 

The same sail-boat that had taken the Cap- 
tain up to the town was waiting for Barnaby 
and the young lady as they came down to the 
landing-place. There the Captain of the brigan- 
tine having wished them godspeed, and having 
shaken Barnaby very heartily by the hand, 
he helped to push off the boat, which with the 
slant of the wind presently sailed swiftly away, 
dropping the shore and those strange beings, 
and the brigantine in which they sailed, alike 
behind them into the night. 

They could hear through the darkness the 
creaking of the sails being hoisted aboard of the 
pirate vessel; nor did Barnaby True ever set 
eyes upon it or the crew again, nor, so far as 
the writer is informed, did anybody else. 


X 

It was nigh midnight when they made Mr. 
Hartright’s wharf at the foot of Beaver Street. 
170 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


There Barnaby and the boatmen assisted the 
young lady ashore, and our hero and she walked 
up through the now silent and deserted street 
to Mr. Hartright’s house. 

You may conceive of the wonder and amaze- 
ment of our hero’s dear step - father when 
aroused by Barnaby ’s continued knocking at 
the street door, and clad in a dressing-gown and 
carrying a lighted candle in his hand, he un- 
locked and unbarred the door, and so saw who 
it was had aroused him at such an hour of the 
night, and beheld the young and beautiful 
lady whom Barnaby had brought home with 
him. 

The first thought of the good man was that 
the Belle Helen had come into port; nor did 
Barnaby undeceive him as he led the way into 
the house, but waited until they were all safe 
and sound together before he should unfold 
his strange and wonderful story. 

“This was left for you by two foreign sailors 
this afternoon, Barnaby,” the good man said, 
as he led the way through the hall, holding 
up the candle at the same time, so that Barnaby 
might see an object that stood against the wain- 
scoting by the door of the dining-room. 

171 


STOLEN TREASURE 

It was with difficulty that our hero could 
believe his eyes when he beheld one of the 
treasure-chests that Sir John Malyoe had fetched 
with such particularity from Jamaica. 

He bade his step-father hold the light nigher, 
and then, his mother having come down-stairs 
by this time, he flung back the lid and displayed 
to the dazzled sight of all the great treasure 
therein contained. 

You are to suppose that there was no sleep 
for any of them that night, for what with 
Barnaby's narrative of his adventures, and 
what with the thousand questions asked of him, 
it was broad daylight before he had finished 
the half of all that he had to relate. 

The next day but one brought the Belle Helen 
herself into port, with the terrible news not only 
of having been attacked at night by pirates, 
but also that Sir John Malyoe was dead. For 
whether it was the sudden fright that overset 
him, or whether it was the strain of passion that 
burst some blood-vessel upon his brain, it is 
certain that when the pirates quitted the Belle 
Helen, carrying with them the young lady and 
Barnaby and the travelling-trunks, they left 
Sir John Malyoe lying in a fit upon the floor, 
172 


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 


frothing at the mouth and black in the face, 
as though he had been choked. It was in this 
condition that he was raised and taken to 
his berth, where, the next morning about two 
o’clock, he died, without once having opened 
his eyes or spoken a single word. 

As for the villain man-servant, no one ever 
saw him afterwards ; though whether he jumped 
overboard, or whether the pirates who so at- 
tacked the ship had carried him away bodily, 
who shall say ? 

Mr. Hartright had been extremely perplexed 
as to the ownership of the chest of treasure 
that had been left by those men for Barnaby, 
but the news of the death of Sir John Malyoe 
made the matter very easy for him to decide. 
For surely if that treasure did not belong to 
Barnaby, there could be no doubt but that it 
belonged to his wife— she being Sir John Malyoe’s 
legal heir. Thus it was that he satisfied him- 
self, and thus that great fortune (in actual com- 
putation amounting to upward of sixty-three 
thousand pounds) fell to Barnaby True, the 
grandson of that famous pirate William Brand. 

As for the other case of treasure, it was never 
heard of again, nor could Barnaby decide wheth- 

173 


STOLEN TREASURE 


er it was divided as booty among the pirates, 
or whether they had carried it away with them 
to some strange and foreign land, there to share 
it among themselves. 

It is thus we reach the conclusion of our his- 
tory, with only this to observe, that whether 
that strange appearance of Captain Brand was 
indeed a ghostly and spiritual visitation, or 
whether he was present on those two occasions 
in flesh and blood, he was, as has been said, 
never heard of again. 


A TRUE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL 
AT NEW HOPE 


I 


IV 


A TRUE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 

At the time of the beginning of the events about 
to be narrated — which the reader is to be in- 
formed occurred between the years 1^40 and 
1^42 — there stood upon the high and rugged 
crest of Pick-a-N eck-a-Sock Point (or Pig 
and Sow Point, as it had come to be called) 
the wooden ruins of a disused church, known 
throughout those parts as the Old Free Grace 
Meeting-house. 

This humble edifice had been erected by a peculiar 
religious sect calling themselves the Free Grace 
Believers, the radical tenet of whose creed was 
a denial of the existence of such a place as 
Hell, and an affirmation of the universal 
mercy of God, to the intent that all souls 
should enjoy eternal happiness in the life to 
come. 

For this dangerous heresy the Free Grace Believers 
177 


12 


STOLEN TREASURE 


were expelled from the Massachusetts Colony, 
and, after sundry peregrinations, settled at 
last in the Providence Plantations, upon Pick- 
a-N eck-a-Sock Point, coadjacent to the town 
of New Hope. There they built themselves 
a small cluster of huts, and a church wherein 
to worship; and there for a while they dwelt, 
earning a precarious livelihood from the un- 
generous soil upon which they had established 
themselves. 

As may be supposed, the presence of so strange a 
people was entertained with no great degree 
of complaisance by the vicinage, and at last an 
old deed granting Pick-a-N eck-a-Sock to Cap- 
tain Isaiah Applebody was revived by the heirs 
of that renowned Indian- fighter, whereupon 
the Free Grace Believers were warned to leave 
their bleak and rocky refuge for some other 
abiding-place. Accordingly, driven forth into 
the world again, they embarked in the snow^ 
Good Companion,'^ of Bristol, for the Province 
of Pennsylvania, and were afterwards heard of 
no more in those parts. Their vacated houses 
crumbled away into ruins, and their church 
tottered to decay. 

* A two-masted square-rigged vessel. 

178 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


So at the beginning of these events, upon the 
narrative of which the author now invites the 
reader to embark together with himself. 


I 

HOW THE DEVIL HAUNTED THE MEETING-HOUSE 

AT the period of this narrative the settlement 
of New Hope had grown into a very consid- 
erable seaport town, doing an extremely hand- 
some trade with the West Indies in cornmeal 
and dried codfish for sugar, molasses, and rum. 

Among the more important citizens of this 
now wealthy and elegant community, the most 
notable was Colonel William Belford — a mag- 
nate at once distinguished and honored in the 
civil and military affairs of the colony. This 
gentleman was an illegitimate son of the Earl 
of Clandennie by the daughter of a surgeon of 
the Sixty-seventh Regiment of Scots, and he had 
inherited a very considerable fortune upon the 
death of his father, from which he now enjoyed 
a comfortable competency. 

Our Colonel made no little virtue of the cir- 
cumstances of his exalted birth. He was wont 
179 


STOLEN TREASURE 


to address his father’s memory with a sobriety 
that lent to the fact of his illegitimacy a por- 
tentous air of seriousness, and he made no 
secret of the fact that he was the friend and the 
confidential correspondent of the present Earl 
of Clandennie. In his intercourse with the 
several Colonial governors he assumed an atti- 
tude of authority that only his lineage could 
have supported him in maintaining, and, 
possessing a large and commanding presence, 
he bore himself with a continent reserve that 
never failed to inspire with awe those whom he 
saw fit to favor with his conversation. 

This noble and distinguished gentleman 
possessed in a brother an exact and perfect 
opposite to himself. Captain Obadiah Belford 
was a West Indian, an inhabitant of Kingston 
in the island of Jamaica. He was a cursing, 
swearing, hard-drinking renegado from virtue; 
an acknowledged dealer in negro slaves, and 
reputed to have been a buccaneer, if not an out- 
and-out pirate, such as then infested those 
tropical latitudes in prodigious numbers. He 
was not unknown in New Hope, which he had 
visited upon several occasions for a week or so 
at a time. During each period he lodged with 
i8o 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


his brother, whose household he scandalized 
by such freaks as smoking his pipe of tobacco 
in the parlor, offering questionable pleasantries 
to the female servants, and cursing and swear- 
ing in the hallways with a fecundity and an 
ingenuity that would have put the most godless 
sailor about the docks to the blush. 

Accordingly, it may then be supposed into 
what a dismay it threw Colonel Belford when 
one fine day he received a letter from Captain 
Obadiah, in which our West Indian desperado 
informed his brother that he proposed quitting 
those torrid latitudes in which he had lived for 
so long a time, and that he intended thenceforth 
to make his home in New Hope. 

Addressing Colonel Belford as “My dear 
Billy,” he called upon that gentleman to rejoice 
at this determination, and informed him that 
he proposed in future to live “as decent a limb 
of grace as ever broke loose from hell,” and 
added that he was going to fetch as a present 
for his niece Belinda a “dam pirty little black 
girl” to carry her prayer-book to church for her. 

Accordingly, one fine morning, in pursuance 
of this promise, our West Indian suddenly ap- 
peared at New Hope with a prodigious quantity 

i8i 


STOLEN TREASURE 


of chests and travelling-cases, and with so 
vociferous an acclamation that all the town 
knew of his arrival within a half-hour of that 
event. 

When, however, he presented himself before 
Colonel Belford, it was to meet with a welcome 
so frigid and an address so reserved that a 
douche of cold water could not have quenched 
his verbosity more entirely. For our great 
man had no notion to submit to the continued 
infliction of the West Indian’s presence. Ac- 
cordingly, after the first words of greeting had 
passed, he addressed Captain Obadiah in a 
strain somewhat after this fashion: 

“ Indeed, I protest, my dear brother Obadiah, 
it is with the heartiest regrets in the world that 
I find myself obliged to confess that I cannot 
offer you a home with myself and my family. 
It is not alone that your manners displease me — 
though, as an elder to a younger, I may say 
to you that we of these more northern latitudes 
do not entertain the same tastes in such par- 
ticulars as doubtless obtain in the West Indies 
— but the habits of my household are of such a 
nature that I could not hope to form them to 
your liking. I can, however, offer as my advice 
182 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


that you may find lodgings at the Blue Lion 
Tavern, which doubtless will be of a sort exactly 
to fit your inclinations. I have made inquiries, 
and I am sure you will find the very best 
apartments to be obtained at that excellent 
hostelry placed at your disposal.” 

To this astounding address our West Indian 
could, for a moment, make no other immediate 
reply than to open his eyes and to glare upon 
Colonel Belford, so that, what with his tall, lean 
person, his long neck, his stooping shoulders, 
and his yellow face stained upon one side an 
indigo blue by some premature explosion of 
gunpowder — what with all this and a prodigious 
hooked beak of a nose, he exactly resembled 
some hungry predatory bird of prey meditating 
a pounce upon an unsuspecting victim. At 
last, finding his voice, and rapping the ferrule of 
his ivory-headed cane upon the floor to em- 
phasize his declamation, he cried out: “What! 
What! What! Is this the way to offer a wel- 
come to a brother new returned to your house ? 

Why, 1 who are you? Am not I 

your brother, who could buy you out twice 
over and have enough left to live in velvet? 
Why! Why! — Very well, then, have it your 
183 


STOLEN TREASURE 


own way; but if I don’t grind your face into the 
mud and roll you into the dirt my name is not 
Obadiah Belfordl” Thereupon, striving to say 
more but finding no fit words for the occasion, 
he swung upon his heel and incontinently de- 
parted, banging the door behind him like a clap 
of thunder, and cursing and swearing so pro- 
digiously as he strode away down the street that 
an infernal from the pit could scarcely have 
exceeded the fury of his maledictions. 

However, he so far followed Colonel Belford’s 
advice that he took up his lodgings at the Blue 
Lion Tavern, where, in a little while, he had 
gathered about him a court of all such as 
chose to take advantage of his extravagant 
bounty. 

Indeed, he poured out his money with in- 
credible profusion, declaring, with many in- 
genious and self -consuming oaths, that he could 
match fortunes with the best two men in New 
Hope, and then have enough left to buy up 
his brother from his hair to his boot-leathers. 
He made no secret of the rebuff he had sustained 
from Colonel Belford, for his grievance clung 
to him like hot pitch — ^itching the more he 
meddled with it. Sometimes his fury was such 
184 


HE WOULD SHOUT OPPROBIOUS WORDS AFTER THE OTHER IN THE STREETS 





I 




r * 


t 


4 \ 



THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


that he could scarcely contain himself. Upon 
such occasions, cursing and swearing like an in- 
fernal, he would call Heaven to witness that he 
would live in New Hope if for no other reason 
than to bring shame to his brother, and he 
would declare again and again, with incredible 
variety of expletives, that he would grind his 
brother’s face into the dirt for him. 

Accordingly he set himself assiduously at 
work to tease and torment the good man with 
every petty and malicious trick his malevolence 
could invent. He would shout opprobrious 
words after the other in the streets, to the enter- 
tainment of all who heard him ; he would parade 
up and down before Colonel Belford’s house 
singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at 
the top of his voice; he would even rattle the 
ferrule of his cane against the palings of the 
fence, or throw a stone at Madam Belford’s cat 
in the wantonness of his malice. 

Meantime he had purchased a considerable 
tract of land, embracing Pig and Sow Point, and 
including the Old Free Grace Meeting-House. 
Here, he declared, it was his intention to erect a 
house for himself that should put his brother’s 
wooden shed to shame. Accordingly he pres- 
i8s 


STOLEN TREASURE 


ently began the erection of that edifice, so con- 
siderable in size and occupying so commanding 
a situation that it was the admiration of all 
those parts, and was known to fame as Belford’s 
Palace. This magnificent residence was built 
entirely of brick, and Captain Obadiah made it 
a boast that the material therefor was brought 
all the way around from New York in fiats. 
In the erection of this elegant structure all the 
carpenters and masons in the vicinage were 
employed, so that it grew up with an amaz- 
ing rapidity. Meantime, upon the site of the 
building, rum and Hollands were kept upon 
draught for all comers, so that the place was 
made the common resort and the scene for 
the orgies of all such of the common people as 
possessed a taste for strong waters, many com- 
ing from so far away as Newport to enjoy our 
Captain’s prodigality. 

Meantime he himself strutted about the 
streets in his red coat trimmed with gilt braid, 
his hat cocked upon one side of his bony head, 
pleasing himself with the belief that he was the 
object of universal admiration, and swelling 
with a vast and consummate self-satisfaction as 
he boasted, with strident voice and extravagant 

i86 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


enunciation, of the magnificence of the palace 
he was building. 

At the same time, having, as he said, shingles 
to spare, he patched and repaired the Old Free 
Grace Meeting-House, so that its gray and 
hoary exterior, while rejuvenated as to the roof 
and walls, presented in a little while an appear- 
ance as of a sudden eruption of bright yellow 
shingles upon its aged hide. Nor would our 
Captain offer any other explanation for so odd 
a freak of fancy than to say that it pleased him 
to do as he chose with his own. 

At last, the great house having been com- 
pleted, and he himself having entered into it and 
furnished it to his satisfaction, our Captain 
presently began entertaining his friends therein 
with a profuseness of expenditure and an excess 
of extravagance that were the continued ad- 
miration of the whole colony. In more part 
the guests whom Captain Obadiah thus re- 
ceived with so lavish an indulgence were officers 
or government officials from the garrisons of 
Newport or of Boston, with whom, by some 
means or other, he had scraped an acquaintance. 
At times these gay gentlemen would fairly take 
possession of the town, parading up and down 
187 


STOLEN TREASURE 

the street under conduct of their host, star- 
ing ladies out of countenance with the utmost 
coolness and effrontery, and offering loud and 
critical remarks concerning all that they beheld 
about them, expressing their opinions with the 
greatest freedom and jocularity. 

Nor were the orgies at Belford’s Palace limited 
to such extravagances as gaming and dicing and 
drinking, for sometimes the community would 
be scandalized by the presence of gayly dressed 
and high-colored ladies, who came, no one knew 
whence, to enjoy the convivialities at the great 
house on the hill, and concerning whom it 
pleased the respectable folk of New Hope to 
entertain the gravest suspicion. 

At first these things raised such a smoke that 
nothing else was to be seen, but by-and-by other 
strange and singular circumstances began to be 
spoken of — ^at first among the common people, 
and then by others. It began to be whispered 
and then to be said that the Old Free Grace 
Meeting-House out on the Point was haunted 
by the Devil. 

The first information concerning this dreadful 
obsession arose from a fisherman, who, coming 
into the harbor of a nightfall after a stormy 

i88 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


day, had, as he affirmed, beheld the old meeting- 
house all of a blaze of light. Some time after, 
a tinker, making a short-cut from Stapleton by 
way of the old Indian road, had a view of a 
similar but a much more remarkable manifesta- 
tion. This time, as the itinerant most solemnly 
declared, the meeting-house was not only seen 
all alight, but a bell was ringing as a signal some- 
where off across the darkness of the water, 
where, as he protested, there suddenly appeared 
a red star, that, blazing like a meteor with a 
surpassing brightness for a few seconds, was 
presently swallowed up into inky darkness again. 
Upon another occasion a fiddler, returning home 
after midnight from Sprowle’s Neck, seeing the 
church alight, had, with a temerity inflamed by 
rum, approached to a nearer distance, whence, 
lying in the grass, he had, he said, at the stroke 
of midnight, beheld a multitude of figures 
emerge from the building, crying most dolorous- 
ly, and then had heard a voice, as of a lost spirit, 
calling aloud, “ Six-and-twenty, all told!” where- 
at the light in the church was instantly ex- 
tinguished into an impenetrable darkness. 

It was said that when Captain Obadiah him- 
self was first apprised of the suspicions enter- 
189 


STOLEN TREASURE 


tained of the demoniacal possession of the old 
meeting-house, he had fixed upon his venture- 
some informant so threatening and ominous a 
gaze that the other could move neither hand nor 
foot under the malignant fury of his observation. 
Then, at last, clearing his countenance of its 
terrors, he had burst into a great, loud laugh, 
crying out: ‘'Well, what then? Why not? 
You must know that the Devil and I have been 
very good friends in times past. I saw a deal 
of him in the West Indies, and I must tell you 
that I built up the old meeting-house again so 
that he and I could talk together now and then 

about old times without having a lot of , 

dried, codfish-eating, rum-drinking Yankee ba- 
con-chewers to listen to every word we had to 
say to each other. If you must know, it was 
only last night that the ghost of Jezebel and I 
danced a fandango together in the graveyard 
up yonder, while the Devil himself sat cross- 
legged on old Daniel Root’s tombstone and blew 
on a dry, dusty shank-bone by way of a flute. 
And now” (here he swore a terrific oath) “you 
know the worst that is to be known, with only 
this to say : if ever a man sets foot upon Pig and 
Sow Point again after nightfall to interfere with 

190 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


the Devil’s sport and mine, he’ll suffer for it as 
sure as fire can burn or brimstone can scorch. 
So put that in your pipe and smoke it.” 

These terrible words, however extravagant, 
were, to be sure, in the nature of a direct con- 
firmation of the very worst suspicion that could 
have been entertained concerning this dolorous 
affair. But if any further doubt lingered as 
to the significance of such malevolent rumors, 
Captain Obadiah himself soon put an end to the 
same. 

The Reverend Josiah Pettibones was used of 
a Saturday to take supper at Colonel Belford’s 
elegant residence. It was upon such an occasion 
and the reverend gentleman and his honored 
host were smoking a pipe of tobacco together 
in the library, when there fell a loud and im- 
portunate knocking at the house door, and 
presently the servant came ushering no less a 
personage than Captain Obadiah himself. After 
directing a most cunning, mischievous look 
at his brother. Captain Obadiah addressed him- 
self directly to the Reverend Mr. Pettibones, 
folding his hands with a most indescribable air 
of mock humility. '‘Sir,” says he — “Reverend 
sir, you see before you a humble and penitent 
191 


STOLEN TREASURE 


sinner, who has fallen so desperately deep into 
iniquities that he knows not whether even so 
profound piety as yours can elevate him out of 
the pit in which he finds himself. Sir, it has got 
about the town that the Devil has taken posses- 
sion of my old meeting-house, and, alas ! I have 
to confess — that it is the truths Here our Cap- 
tain hung his head down upon his breast as 
though overwhelmed with the terrible com- 
munication he had made. 

“ What is this that I hear ?” cried the reverend 
gentleman. “Can I believe my ears?” 

“Believe your ears!” exclaimed Colonel Bel- 
ford. “ To be sure you cannot believe your ears. 
Do you not see that this is a preposterous lie, 
and that he is telling it to you to tease and to 
mortify me?” 

At this Captain Obadiah favored his brother 
with a look of exaggerated and sanctimonious 
humility. “Alas, brother,” he cried out, “for 
accusing me so unjustly! Fie upon you! 
Would you check a penitent in his confession ? 
But you must know that it is to this gentleman 
that I address myself, and not to you.” Then 
directing his discourse once more to the Rever- 
end Mr. Pettibones, he resumed his address 
192 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


thus : “ Sir, you must know that while I was in 
the West Indies I embarked, among other things, 
in one of those ventures against the Spanish 
Main of which you may have heard.*' 

“Do you mean piracy?” asked the Reverend 
Pettibones; and Captain Obadiah nodded his 
head. 

“*Tis a lie!’* cried Colonel Belford, smacking 
his hand upon the table. “ He never possessed 
spirit enough for anything so dangerous as 
piracy or more mischievous than slave-trading.” 

“ Sir,” quoth Captain Obadiah to the reverend 
gentleman, “again I say *tis to you I address 
my confession. Well, sir, one day we sighted 
a Spanish caravel very rich ladened with a 
prodigious quantity of plate, but were without 
so much as a capful of wind to fetch us up with 
her. ‘ I would,* says I, ‘ offer the Devil my soul 
for a bit of a breeze to bring us alongside.* 
‘Done,* says a voice beside me, and — alas that 
I must confess it! — there I saw a man with a 
very dark coimtenance, whom I had never before 
beheld aboard of our ship. ‘ Sign this,* says he, 
‘ and the breeze is yours !* ‘ What is it upon the 

pen?’ says I. *’Tis blood,* says he. Alas, sir! 
what was a poor wretch so tempted as I to do ?” 

193 


13 


STOLEN TREASURE 


‘‘And did you sign?” asked Mr. Pettibones, 
all agog to hear the conclusion of so strange a 
narration. 

“Woe is me, sir, that I should have done so!” 
quoth Captain Obadiah, rolling his eyes until 
little but the whites of them were to be seen. 

“And did you catch the Spanish ship?” 

“That we did, sir, and stripped her as clean 
as a whistle.” 

“ ’Tis all a prodigious lie!” cried Colonel Bel- 
ford, in a fury. “Sir, can you sit so compla- 
cently and be made a fool of by so extravagant 
a fable?” 

“Indeed it is unbelievable,” said Mr. Petti- 
bones. 

At this faint reply. Captain Obadiah burst 
out laughing; then renewing his narrative — “In- 
deed, sir,” he declared, “you may believe me 
or not, as you please. Nevertheless, I may tell 
you that, having so obtained my prize, and 
having time to think coolly over the bargain I 
had made, I says to myself, says I; ‘Obediah 
Belford! Obadiah Belford, here is a pretty 
pickle you are in. ’Tis time you quit these 
parts and lived decent, or else you are damned 
to all eternity.’ And so I came hither to New 
194 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


Hope, reverend sir, hoping to end my days in 
quiet. Alas, sir! would you believe it? scarce 
had I finished my fine new house up at the Point 
when hither comes that evil being to whom I 
had sold my sorrowful soul. ‘Obadiah/ says 
he, ‘ Obadiah Belford, I have a mind to live in 
New Hope also.’ ‘Where?’ says I. ‘Well,’ 
says he, ‘you may patch up the old meeting- 
house ; ’twill serve my turn for a while. ’ ‘ Well, ’ 

thinks I to myself, ‘there can be no harm in 
that.’ And so I did as he bade me — and would 
not you do as much for one who had served you 
as well? Alas, your reverence! there he is now, 
and I cannot get rid of him, and ’tis over the 
whole town that he has the meeting-house in 
possession.” 

“ ’Tis an incredible story!” cried the Reverend 
Pettibones. 

“ ’Tis a lie from beginning to end!” cried the 
Colonel. 

“ And now how shall I get myself out of my 
pickle?” asked Captain Obadiah. 

“Sir,” said Mr. Pettibones, “if what you tell 
me is true, ’tis beyond my poor powers to aid 
you.” 

“ Alas !” cried Captain Obadiah. “ Alas ! alas ! 

195 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Then, indeed, I’m damned!” And therewith 
flinging his arms into the air as though in the 
extremity of despair, he turned and inconti- 
nently departed, rushing forth out of the house 
as though stimg by ten thousand furies. 

It was the most prodigious piece of gossip 
that ever fell in the way of the Reverend 
Josiah, and for a fortnight he carried it with 
him wherever he went. “ ’Twas the most un- 
believable tale I ever heard,” he would cry. 
“ And yet where there is so much smoke there 
must be some fire. As for the poor wretch, if 
ever I saw a lost soul I beheld him standing 
before me there in Colonel Belford’s library.” 
And then he would conclude: “Yes, yes, ’tis in- 
credible and past all belief. But if it be true in 
ever so little a part, why, then there is justice in 
this — ^that the Devil should take possession of 
the sanctuary of that very heresy that would 
not only have denied him the power that 
every other Christian belief assigns to him, but 
would have destroyed that infernal habitation 
that hath been his dwelling-place for all eter- 
nity.” 

As for Captain Belford, if he desired privacy 
for himself upon Pig and Sow Point, he had 
196 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


taken the very best means to prevent the 
curious from spying upon him there after 
nightfall. 


II 

HOW THE DEVIL STOLE THE COLLECTOR’S SNUFF- 
BOX 

Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse was the Col- 
lector of Customs in the town of New Hope. 
He was a character of no little notoriety in those 
parts, enjoying the reputation of being able to 
consume more pineapple rum with less effect 
upon his balance than any other man in the 
community. He possessed the voice of a sten- 
tor, a short, thick-set, broad-shouldered person, 
a face congested to a violent carnation, and red 
hair of such a color as to add infinitely to the 
consuming fire of his countenance. 

The Custom Office was a little white frame 
building with green shutters, and overhang- 
ing the water as though to topple into the 
tide. Here at any time of the day betwixt the 
hours of ten in the morning and of five in the 
afternoon the Collector was to be found at his 
197 


STOLEN TREASURE 


desk smoking his pipe of tobacco, the while a 
thin, phthisical clerk bent with unrelaxing as- 
siduity over a multitude of account-books and 
papers accumulated before him. 

For his post of Collectorship of the Royal 
Customs, Lieutenant Gk)odhouse was especially 
indebted to the patronage of Colonel Belford. 
The worthy Collector had, some years before, 
come to that gentleman with a written recom- 
mendation from the Earl of Clandennie of a very 
unusual sort. It was the Lieutenant’s good- 
fortune to save the life of the Honorable Fred- 
erick Dunburne, second son of the Earl — a wild, 
rakish, undisciplined youth, much given to such 
mischievous enterprises as the twisting off of 
door-knockers, the beating of the watch, and 
the carrying away of tavern signs. 

Having been a very famous swimmer at 
Eton, the Honorable Frederick imdertook while 
at the Cowes to swim a certain considerable 
distance for a wager. In the midst of this 
enterprise he was suddenly seized with a cramp, 
and would inevitably have drowned had not 
the Lieutenant, who happened in a boat close 
at hand, leaped overboard and rescued the 
young gentleman from the watery grave in 
198 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


which he was about to be engulfed, thus restor- 
ing him once more to the arms of his grateful 
family. 

For this fortunate act of rescue the Earl of 
Clandennie presented to his son’s preserver a 
gold snuffbox filled with guineas, and inscribed 
with the following legend: 

“ To Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse, 
who, under the Ruling of Beneficent Providence, 
was the Happy Preserver of a Beautiful and 
Precious Life of Virtuous Precocity, 
this Box is presented by the Father of Him whom He 
saved as a grateful acknowledgment of His 
Services. 

Thomas Monkhouse Dunburne, Viscoimt of 
Dunburne and Earl of Clandennie, 

August 17, 1752,'* 

Having thus satisfied the immediate demands 
of his gratitude, it is very possible that the 
Earl of Clandennie did not choose to assume 
so great a responsibility as the future of his 
son’s preserver entailed. Nevertheless, feeling 
that something should be done for him, he ob- 
tained for Lieutenant Goodhouse a passage to 
the Americas, and wrote him a strong letter of 
recommendation to Colonel Belford. That gen- 
199 


STOLEN TREASURE 


tleman, desiring to please the legitimate head 
of his family, used his influence so successfully 
that the Lieutenant was presently granted the 
position of Collector of Customs in the place of 
Captain MauU, who had lately deceased. 

The Lieutenant, somewhat to the siuprise of 
his patrons, filled his new official position as 
Collector not only with vigor, but with a not 
unbecoming dignity. He possessed an infinite 
appreciation of the responsibilities of his office, 
and he was more jealous to collect every far- 
thing of the royal duties than he would have 
been had those moneys been gathered for his 
own emolument. 

Under the old Collectorship of Captain Maull, 
it was no unusual thing for a barraco of super- 
fine Hollands, a bolt of silk cloth, or a keg of 
brandy to find its way into the house of some 
influential merchant or Colonial dignitary. 
But in no such manner was Lieutenant Good- 
house derelict in his duties. He would have 
sacrificed his dearest friendship or his most 
precious attachment rather than fail in his 
duties to the Crown. In the intermission of his 
duties it might please him to relax into the softer 
humors of conviviality, but at ten o’clock in the 


200 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


morning, whatever his condition of sobriety, 
he assumed at once all the sterner panoply of a 
Collector of the Royal Customs. 

Thus he set his virtues against his vices, and 
struck an even balance between them. When 
most unsteady upon his legs he most asserted 
his integrity, declaring that not a gill or a thread 
came into his port without paying its duty, and 
calling Heaven to witness that it had been his 
hand that had saved the life of a noble young 
gentleman. Thereupon, perhaps, drawing forth 
the gleaming token of his prowess — the gold 
snuffbox — from his breeches-pocket, and hold- 
ing it tight in his brown and hairy fist, he would 
first offer his interlocutor a pinch of rappee, and 
would then call upon him to read the inscription 
engraved upon the lid of the case, demanding 
to know whether it mattered a fig if a man did 
drink a drop too much now and then, provided 
he collected every farthing of the royal revenues, 
and had been the means of saving the ^on of the 
Earl of Clandennie. 

Never for an instant upon such an occasion 
would he permit his precious box to quit his 
possession. It was to him an emblem of those 
virtues that no one knew but himself, wherefore 


201 


STOLEN TREASURE 


the more he misdoubted his own virtuousness 
the more valuable did the token of that rectitude 
become in his eyes. “ Yes, you may look at it,” 
he would say, “ but damme if you shall handle it. 
I would not,” he would cry, “let the Devil him- 
self take it out of my hands.” 

The talk concerning the impious possession 
of the Old Free Grace Meeting-House was at its 
height when the official consciousness of the 
Collector, who was just then laboring under his 
constitutional infirmity, became suddenly seized 
with an irrepressible alarm. He declared that 
he smoked something worse than the Devil 
upon Pig and Sow Point, and protested that it 
was his opinion that Captain Obadiah was doing 
a bit of free-trade upon his own account, and 
that dutiable goods were being smuggled in at 
night under cover of these incredible stories. 
He registered a vow, sealing it with the most 
solemn protestations, and with a multiplicity 
of ingenious oaths that only a mind stimulated 
by the heat of intoxication could have invented, 
that he would make it his business, upon the 
first occasion that offered, to go down to Pig 
and Sow Point and to discover for himself 
whether it was the Devil or smugglers that had 


202 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


taken possession of the Old Free Grace Meeting- 
House. Thereupon, hauling out his precious 
snuffbox and rapping upon the lid, he offered 
a pinch around. Then calling attention to the 
inscription, he demanded to know whether a 
man who had behaved so well upon that oc- 
casion had need to be afraid of a whole church- 
ful of devils. “I would,” he cried, “offer the 
Devil a pinch, as I have offered it to you. Then 
I would bid him read this and tell me whether 
he dared to say that black was the white of my 
eye.” 

Nor were those words a vain boast upon the 
Collector’s part, for, before a week had passed, 
it being reported that there had been a renewal 
of manifestations at the old church, the Collector, 
finding nobody with sufficient courage to ac- 
company him, himself entered into a small boat 
and rowed down alone to Pig and Sow Point to 
investigate, for his own satisfaction, those ap- 
pearances that so agitated the community. 

It was dusk when the Collector departed upon 
that memorable and solitary expedition, and it 
was entirely dark before he had reached its con- 
clusion. He had taken with him a bottle of 
Extra Reserve rum to drive, as he declared, the 
203 


STOLEN TREASURE 


chill out of his bones. Accordingly it seemed 
to him to be a surprisingly brief interval before 
he found himself floating in his boat under the 
impenetrable shadow of the rocky promontory. 
The profound and infinite gloom of night over- 
hung him with a portentous darkness, melting 
only into a liquid obscurity as it touched and 
dissolved into the stretch of waters across the 
bay. But above, on the high and rugged 
shoulder of the Point, the Collector, with dulled 
and swimming vision, beheld a row of dim and 
lurid lights, whereupon, collecting his faculties, 
he opined that the radiance he beheld was 
emitted from the windows of the Old Free Grace 
Meeting-House. 

Having made fast his boat with a drunken 
gravity, the Collector walked directly, though 
with uncertain steps, up the steep and rugged 
path towards that mysterious illumination. 
Now and then he stumbled over the stones and 
cobbles that lay in his way, but he never quite 
lost his balance, neither did he for a moment 
remit his drunken gravity. So with a befuddled 
and obstinate perseverance he reached at last 
to the conclusion of his adventure and of his 
fate. 


204 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


The old meeting-house was two stories in 
height, the lower story having been formerly 
used by the Free Grace Believers as a place 
wherein to celebrate certain obscure mysteries 
appertaining to their belief. The upper story, 
devoted to the more ordinary worship of their 
Sunday meetings, was reached by a tall, steep 
flight of steps that led from the groimd to a 
covered porch which sheltered the doorway. 

The Collector paused only long enough to 
observe that the shutters of the lower story were 
tight shut and barred, and that the dull and 
lurid light shone from the windows above. Then 
he directly mounted the steps with a courage 
and a perfect assurance that can only be en- 
tirely enjoyed by one in his peculiar condition 
of inebriety. 

He paused to knock at the door, and it appear- 
ed to him that his knuckles had hardly fallen 
upon the panel before the valve was flung sud- 
denly open. An indescribable and heavy odor 
fell upon him and for the moment overpowered 
his senses, and he foimd himself standing face to 
face with a figure prodigiously and portentously 
tall. 

Even at this unexpected apparition the 
20 $ 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Collector lost possession of no part of his cour- 
age. Rather he stiffened himself to a more 
stubborn and obstinate resolution. Steadying 
himself for his address, “I know very well,’* 
quoth he, ‘‘who you are. You are the Divil, I 
dare say. but damme if you shall do business 
here without paying your duties to King George. 
I may drink a drop too much,” he cried, “but 
I collect my duties — every farthing of ’em.” 
Then drawing forth his snuffbox, he thrust it 
under the nose of the being to whom he spake. 
“Take a pinch and read that,” he roared, “but 
don’t handle it, for I wouldn’t take all hell to let 
it out of my hand.” 

The being whom he addressed had stood for 
all this while as though bereft of speech and of 
movement, but at these last words he appeared 
to find his voice, for he gave forth a strident 
bellow of so dreadful and terrible a sort that 
the Collector, brave as he found himself, stepped 
back a pace or two before it. The next instant 
he was struck upon the wrist as though by a 
bolt of lightning, and the snuffbox, describing 
a yellow circle against the light of the door, 
disappeared into the darkness of the night be- 
yond. Ere he could recover himself another 
206 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


blow smote him upon the breast, and he fell 
headlong from the platform, as through infinite 
space. 

The next day the Collector did not present 
himself at the office at his accustomed hour, and 
the morning wore along without his appearing at 
his desk. By noon serious alarm began to take 
possession of the community, and about two 
o’clock, the tide being then set out pretty strong, 
Mr. Tompkins, the consumptive clerk, and two 
sailors from the Sarah Goodrich, then lying at 
Mr. Hoppins’s wharf, went down in a yawl-boat 
to learn, if possible, what had befallen him. 
They coasted along the Point for above a half- 
hour before they discovered any vestige of the 
missing Collector. Then at last they saw him 
lying at a little distance upon a cobbled strip 
of beach, where, judging from his position and 
from the way he had composed himself to rest, 
he appeared to have been overcome by liquor. 

At this place Mr. Tompkins put ashore, and 
making the best of his way over the slippery 
stones exposed at low water, came at last to 
where his chief was lying. The Collector was 
reposing with one arm over his eyes, as though 
207 


STOLEN TREASURE 

to shelter them from the sun, but as soon as Mr. 
Tompkins had approached close enough to see 
his countenance, he uttered a great cry that was 
like a scream. For, by the blue and livid lips 
parted at the corners to show the yellow teeth, 
from the waxy whiteness of the fat and hairy 
hands — in short, from the appearance of the 
whole figure, he was aware in an instant that 
the Collector was dead. 

His cry brought the two sailors running. 
They, with the utmost coolness imaginable, 
turned the Collector over, but discovered no 
marks of violence upon him, till of a sudden one 
of them called attention to the fact that his 
neck was broke. Upon this the other opined 
that he had fallen among the rocks and twisted 
his neck. 

The two mariners then made an investigation 
of his pockets, the clerk standing by the while 
paralyzed with horror, his face the color of 
dough, his scalp creeping, and his hands and 
fingers twitching as though with the palsy. 
For there was something indescribably dreadful 
in the spectacle of those living hands searching 
into the dead^s pockets, and he would freely 
have given a week’s pay if he had never embark- 
208 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 

ed upon the expedition for the recovery of his 
chief. 

In the Collector’s pockets they found a twist 
of tobacco, a red bandanna handkerchief of vio- 
lent color, a purse meagrely filled with copper 
coins and silver pieces, a silver watch still tick- 
ing with a loud and insistent iteration, a piece 
of tarred string, and a clasp-knife. 

The snuffbox which the Lieutenant had re- 
garded with such prodigious pride as the one 
emblem of his otherwise dubious virtue was 
gone. 


Ill 

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLE- 
MAN OF QUALITY 

The Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second 
son of the Earl of Clandennie, having won some 
six hundred pounds at 6cart4 at a single sitting 
at Pintzennelli’s, embarked with his two friends, 
Captain Blessington and Lord George Fitzhope, 
to conclude the night with a roimd of final 
dissipation in the more remote parts of London. 
Accordingly they embarked at York Stairs for 
209 


14 


STOLEN TREASURE 


the Three Cranes, ripe for any mischief. Upon 
the water the three young gentlemen amused 
themselves by shouting and singing, pausing 
only now and then to discharge a broadside of 
raillery at the occupants of some other and 
passing boat. 

All went very well for a while, some of those 
in the passing boats laughing and railing in re- 
turn, others shouting out angry replies. At last 
they fell in with a broad-beamed, flat-nosed. 
Dutch-appearing yawl-boat, pulling heavily up 
against the stream, and loaded with a crew of 
half-drunken sailors just come into port. In 
reply to the challenge of our young gentlemen, 
a man in the stern of the other boat, who ap- 
peared to be the captain of the crew — a fellow, 
as Dunburne could indefinitely perceive by the 
dim light of the lanthorn and the faint illumina- 
tion of the misty half-moon, possessing a great, 
coarse red face and a bullet head surmounted 
by a mildewed and mangy fur cap — ^bawled out, 
in reply, that if they would only put their boat 
near enough for a minute or two he would give 
them a bell5dul of something that would make 
them quiet for the rest of the night. He added 
that he would ask for nothing better than to 


210 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


have the opportunity of beating Dunburne’s 
head to a pudding, and that he would give a 
crown to have the three of them within arm’s- 
reach for a minute. 

Upon this Captain Blessington swore that he 
should be immediately accommodated, and 
therewith delivered an order to that effect to 
the watermen. These obeyed so promptly that 
almost before Dunburne was aware of what had 
happened the two boats were side by side, with 
hardly a foot of space between the gunwales. 
Dunburne beheld one of the watermen of his 
own boat knock down one of the crew of the 
other with the blade of an oar, and then he him- 
self was clutched by the collar in the grasp of the 
man with the fur cap. Him Dunburne struck 
twice in the face, and in the moonlight he saw 
that he had started the blood to running down 
from his assailant’s nose. But his blows pro- 
duced no other effect than to call forth a volley 
of the most horrible oaths that ever greeted his 
ears. Thereupon the boats drifted so far apart 
that our young gentleman was haled over the 
gunwale and soused in the cold water of the 
river. The next moment some one struck him 
upon the head with a belaying-pin or a billet of 


STOLEN TREASURE 


wood, a blow so crushing that the darkness seem- 
ed to split asunder with a prodigious flaming of 
lights and a myriad of circling stars, which 
presently disappeared into the profoimd and 
utter darkness of insensibility. 

How long this swoon continued our young 
gentleman could never tell, but when he re- 
gained so much of his consciousness as to be 
aware of the things about him, he beheld him- 
self to be conflned in a room, the walls whereof 
were yellow and greasy with dirt, he himself 
having been laid upon a bed so foul and so dis- 
pleasing to his taste that he could not but regret 
the swoon from which he had emerged into 
consciousness. Looking down at his person, 
he beheld that his clothes had all been taken 
away from him, and that he was now clad in a 
shirt with only one sleeve, and a pair of breeches 
so tattered that they barely covered his naked- 
ness. 

While he lay thus, dismally depressed by so 
sad a pickle as that into which he found himself 
plunged, he was strongly and painfully aware 
of an uproarious babble of loud and drunken 
voices and a continual clinking of glasses, which 
appeared to sound as from a tap-room beneath, 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


these commingled now and then with oaths and 
scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the 
hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremen- 
dous and straining painfulness, as though it 
would burst asunder, and he w'as possessed by 
a burning thirst that seemed to consume his 
very vitals. He called aloud, and in reply a 
fat, one-eyed woman came, fetching him some- 
thing to drink in a cup. This he swallowed 
with avidity, and thereupon (the liquor perhaps 
having been drugged) he dropped off into un- 
consciousness once more. 

When at last he emerged for a second time 
into the light of reason, it was to find himself 
aboard a brig — the Prophet Daniel^ he discovered 
her name to be — bound for Baltimore, in the 
Americas, and then pitching and plunging upon 
a westerly running stern-sea, and before a 
strong wind that drove the vessel with enormous 
velocity upon its course for those remote and 
unknown countries for which it was bound. 
The land was still in sight both astern and 
abeam, but before him lay the boundless and 
tremendously infinite stretch of the ocean. 
Dunburne found himself still to be clad in the 
one-armed shirt and tattered breeches that had 
213 


STOLEN TREASURE 

adorned him in the house of the crimp in which 
he had first awakened. Now, however, an old 
tattered hat with only a part of the crown had 
been added to his costume. As though to 
complete the sad disorder of his appearance, he 
discovered, upon passing his hand over his 
coxmtenance, that his beard and hair had 
started a bristling growth, and that the lump 
on his crown — which was even yet as big as a 
walnut — was still patched with pieces of dirty 
sticking-plaster. Indeed, had he but known 
it, he presented as miserable an appearance as 
the most miserable of those wretches who were 
daily ravished from the slums and streets of the 
great cities to be shipped to the Americas. Nor 
was he a long time in discovering that he was 
now one of the several such indentured servants 
who, upon the conclusion of their voyage, were 
to be sold for their passage in the plantations of 
Maryland. 

Having learned so much of his miserable fate, 
and being now able to make shift to walk 
(though with weak and stumbling steps), our 
young gentleman lost no time in seeking the 
Captain, to whom he endeavored to explain the 
several accidents that had befallen him, acknowl- 
214 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


edging that he was the second son of the Earl 
of Clandennie, and declaring that if he, the 
Captain, would put the Prophet Daniel back into 
some English port again, his lordship would 
make it well worth his while to lose so much 
time for the sake of one so dear as a second son. 
To this address the Captain, supposing him 
either to be drunk or disordered in his mind, 
made no other reply than to knock him in- 
continently down upon the deck, bidding him 
return forward where he belonged. 

Thereafter poor Dunburne found himself en- 
joying the reputation of a harmless madman. 
The name of the Earl of Rags was bestowed 
upon him, and the miserable companions of his 
wretched plight were never tired of tempting 
him to recount his adventures, for the sake 
of entertaining themselves by teasing that which 
they supposed to be his hapless mania. 

Nor is it easy to conceive of all the torments 
that those miserable, obscene wretches were 
able to inflict upon him. 

Under the teasing sting of his companions’ 
malevolent pleasantries, there were times when 
Dunburne might, as he confessed to himself, 
have committed a murder with the greatest 

215 


STOLEN TREASURE 


satisfaction in the world. However, he was 
endowed with no small command of self-re- 
straint, so that he was still able to curb his 
passions within the bounds of reason and of 
policy. He was, fortunately, a complete master 
of the French and Italian languages, so that 
when the fury of his irritation would become 
too excessive for him to control, he would ease 
his spirits by castigating his tormentors with a 
consuming verbosity in those foreign tongues, 
which, had his companions understood a single 
word of that which he uttered, would have 
earned for him a beating that would have land- 
ed him within an inch of his life. However, 
they attributed all that he said to the irrational 
gibbering of a maniac. 

About midway of their voyage the Prophet 
Daniel encountered a tremendous storm, which 
drove her so far out of the Captain's reckoning 
that when land was sighted, in the afternoon 
of a tempestuous day in the latter part of 
August, the first mate, who had been for some 
years in the New England trade, opined that 
it was the coast of Rhode Island, and that if 
the Captain chose to do so he might run into 
New Hope Harbor and lie there until the south- 
216 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


easier had blown itself out. This advice the 
Captain immediately put into execution, so 
that by nightfall they had dropped anchor in 
the comparative quiet of that excellent harbor. 

Dunburne was a most excellent and practised 
swimmer. That evening, when the dusk had 
pretty well fallen, he jumped overboard, dived 
under the brig, and came up on the other side. 
Thus leaving all hands aboard looking for him 
or for his dead body at the starboard side of the 
Prophet Daniel, he himself swam slowly away 
to the larboard. Now partly under water, now 
floating on his back, he directed his course 
towards a point of land about a mile away, 
whereon, as he had observed before the dark 
had settled down, there stood an old wooden 
building resembling a church, and a great brick 
house with tall, lean chimneys at a little farther 
distance inland. 

The intemperate cold of the water of those 
parts of America was so much more excessive 
than Dunburne had been used to swim in that 
when he dragged himself out upon the rocky, 
bowlder-strewn beach he lay for a considerable 
time more dead than alive. His limbs ap- 
peared to possess hardly any vitality, so be- 
217 


STOLEN TREASURE 


numbed were they by the icy chill that had 
entered into the very marrow of his bones. 
Nor did he for a long while recover from this 
excessive rigor; his limbs still continued at in- 
tervals to twitch and shudder as with a con- 
vulsion, nor could he at such times at all con- 
trol their trembling. At last, however, with 
a huge sigh, he aroused himself to some per- 
ception of his surroundings, which he acknowl- 
edged were of as dispiriting a sort as he could 
well have conceived of. His recovering senses 
were distracted by a ceaseless watery din, for 
the breaking waves, rushing with a prodigious 
swiftness from the harbor to the shore before 
the driving wind, fell with uproarious crashing 
into white foam among the rocks. Above this 
watery tumult spread the wet gloom of the night, 
full of the blackness and pelting chill of a fine 
slanting rain. 

Through this shroud of mist and gloom Dun- 
burne at last distinguished a faint light, blurred 
by the sheets of rain and darkness, and shining 
as though from a considerable distance. Cheered 
by this nearer presence of human life, our young 
gentleman presently gathered his benumbed 
powers together, arose, and after a while began 
218 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


slowly and feebly to climb a stony hill that lay 
between the rocky beach and that faint but 
encouraging illumination. 

So, sorely buffeted by the tempest, he at last 
reached the black, square form of that structure 
from which the light shone. The building he 
perceived to be a little wooden church of two 
stories in height. The shutters of the lower 
story were tight fastened, as though bolted from 
within. Those above were open, and from 
them issued the light that had guided him in 
his approach from the beach. A tall flight of 
wooden steps, wet in the rain, reached to a small, 
enclosed porch or vestibule, w^hence a door, now 
tight shut, gave ingress into the second story of 
the church. 

Thence, as Dunburne stood without, he could 
now distinguish the dull muttering of a man’s 
voice, which he opined might be that of the 
preacher. Our young gentleman, as may be 
supposed, was in a wretched plight. He was 
ragged and unshaven ; his only clothing was the 
miserable shirt and bepatched breeches that 
had served him as shelter throughout the long 
voyage. These abominable garments were now 
wet to the skin, and so displeasing was his ap- 
219 


STOLEN TREASURE 


pearance that he was forced to acknowledge to 
himself that he did not possess enough of 
humility to avow so great a misery to the light 
and to the eyes of strangers. Accordingly, 
finding some shelter afforded by the vestibule 
of the church, he crouched there in a corner, 
huddling his rags about him, and finding a 
certain poor warmth in thus hiding away from 
the buffeting of the chill and penetrating wind. 

As he so crouched he presently became aware 
of the sound of many voices, dull and groaning, 
coming from within the edifice, and then — now 
and again — the clanking as of a multitude of 
chains. Then of a sudden, and unexpectedly, 
the door near him was flung wide open, and a 
faint glow of reddish light fell across the pas- 
sage. Instantly the figure of a man came forth, 
and following him came, not a congregation, as 
Dunburne might have supposed, but a most 
dolorous company of nearly, or quite, naked 
men and women, outlined blackly, as they 
emerged, against the dull illumination from 
behind. These wretched beings, sighing and 
groaning most piteously, with a monotonous 
wailing of many voices, were chained by the 
wrist, two and two together, and as they passed 


220 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


by close to Dunburne, his nostrils were over- 
powered by a heavy and fetid odor that came 
partly from within the building, partly from 
the wretched creatures that passed him by. 

As the last of these miserable beings came 
forth from the bowels of that dreadful place, a 
loud voice, so near to Dunburne as to startle his 
ears with its sudden exclamation, cried out, 
“ Six-and-twenty, all told,” and thereat in- 
stantly the dull light from within was quenched 
into darkness. 

In the gloom and the silence that followed, 
Dunburne could hear for a while nothing but 
the dash of the rain upon the roof and the 
ceaseless drip and trickle of the water running 
from the eaves into the puddles beneath the 
building. 

Then, as he stood, still marvelling at what 
he had seen, there suddenly came a loud and 
startling crash, as of a trap-door let fall into its 
place. A faint circle of light shone within the 
darkness of the building, as though from a 
lantern carried in a man’s hands. There was a 
sound of jingling, as of keys, of approaching 
footsteps, and of voices talking together, and 
presently there came out into the vestibule the 
221 


STOLEN TREASURE 


dark figures of two men, one of them carrying 
a ship’s lantern. One of these figures closed and 
locked the door behind him, and then both were 
about to turn away without having observed 
Dunburne, when, of a sudden, a circle from the 
roof of the lantern lit up his pale and melan- 
choly face, and he instantly became aware that 
his presence had been discovered. 

The next moment the lantern was flung up 
almost into his eyes, and in the light he saw 
the sharp, round rim of a pistol-barrel directed 
immediately against his forehead. 

In that moment our young gentleman’s life 
hung as a hair in the balance. In the intense 
instant of expectancy his brain appeared to 
expand as a bubble, and his ears tingled and 
hummed as though a cloud of flies were buzzing 
therein. Then suddenly a voice smote like a 
blow upon the silence — “Who are you, and 
what d’ye want?” 

“Indeed,” said Dunburne, “I do not know.” 

“What do you do here?” 

“Nor do I know that, either.” 

He who held the lantern lifted it so that 
the illumination fell still more fully upon 
Dunburne ’s face and person. Then his in- 


222 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


terlocutor demanded, “ How did you come 
here?” 

Upon the moment Dunburne determined to 
answer so much of the truth as the question 
required. “ ’Twas by no fault of my own,” he 
cried. “I was knocked on the head and kid- 
napped in England, with the design of being 
sold in Baltimore. The vessel that fetched me 
put into the harbor over yonder to wait for good 
weather, and I jumped overboard and swam 
ashore, to stumble into the cursed pickle in 
which I now find myself.” 

“ Have you, then, an education ? To be sure, 
you talk so.” 

“Indeed I have,” said Dunburne — “a decent 
enough education to fit me for a gentleman, if 
the opportunity offered. But what of that?” 
he exclaimed, desperately. “I might as well 
have no more learning than a beggar under the 
bush, for all the good it does me.” 

The other once more flashed the light of his 
lantern over our young gentleman’s miserable 
and barefoot figure. “I had a mind,” says he, 
“to blow your brains out against the wall. I 
have a notion now, however, to turn you 
to some use instead, so 111 just spare your 
223 


STOLEN TREASURE 

life for a little while, till I see how you be- 
have.” 

He spoke with so much more of jocularity 
than he had heretofore used that Dunburne 
recovered in great part his dawning assurance. 
“I am infinitely obliged to you,” he cried, “for 
sparing my brains ; but I protest I doubt if you 
will ever find so good an opportunity again to 
murder me as you have just enjoyed.” 

This speech seemed to tickle the other 
prodigiously, for he burst into a loud and 
boisterous laugh, imder cover of which he thrust 
his pistol back into his coat -pocket again. 
“Come with me, and 111 fit you with victuals 
and decent clothes, of both of which you appear 
to stand in no little need,” he said. Thereupon, 
and without another word, he turned and 
quitted the place, accompanied by his com- 
panion, who for all this time had uttered not a 
single sound. A little way from the church 
these two parted company, with only a brief 
word spoken between them. 

Dunbume’s interlocutor, with our young gen- 
tleman following close behind him, led the way 
in silence for a considerable distance through 
the long, wet grass and the tempestuous dark- 
224 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


ness, until at last, still in unbroken silence, 
they reached the confines of an enclosure, and 
presently stood before a large and imposing 
house built of brick. 

Dunburne’s mysterious guide, still carrying 
the lantern, conducted him directly up a broad 
flight of steps, and opening the door, ushered 
him into a hallway of no inconsiderable pre- 
tensions. Thence he led the way to a dining- 
room beyond, where our young gentleman ob- 
served a long mahogany table, and a sideboard 
of carved mahogany illuminated by three or 
four candles. In answer to the call of his con- 
ductor, a negro servant appeared, whom the 
master of the house ordered to fetch some bread 
and cheese and a bottle of rum for his wretched 
guest. While the servant was gone to execute 
the commission the master seated himself at 
his ease and favored Dunburne with a long and 
most minute regard. Then he suddenly asked 
our young gentleman what was his name. 

Upon the instant Dunburne did not offer a 
reply to this interrogation. He had been so 
miserably abused when he had told the truth 
upon the voyage that he knew not now whether 
to confess or deny his identity. He possessed 
225 


15 


STOLEN TREASURE 


no great aptitude at lying, so that it was with 
no little hesitation that he determined to main- 
tain his incognito. Having reached this con- 
clusion, he answered his host that his name was 
Tom Robinson. The other, however, appeared 
to notice neither his hesitation nor the name 
which he had seen fit to assume. Instead, he 
appeared to be lost in a reverie, which he broke 
only to bid our young gentleman to sit down 
and tell the story of the several adventures that 
had befallen him. He advised him to leave 
nothing untold, however shameful it might be. 
“Be assured,’' said he, “that no matter what 
crimes you may have committed, the more in- 
tolerable your wickedness, the better you will 
please me for the purpose I have in view.” 

Being thus encouraged, and having already 
embarked in disingenuosity, our young gentle- 
man, desiring to please his host, began at ran- 
dom a tale composed in great part of what he 
recollected of the story of Colonel Jack, seasoned 
occasionally with extracts from Mr. Smollett’s 
ingenious novel of Ferdinand, Count Fathom. 
There was hardly a petty crime or a mean 
action mentioned in either of these entertaining 
fictions that he was not willing to attribute to 
226 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


himself. Meanwhile he discovered, to his sur- 
prise, that lying was not really so difficult an 
art as he had supposed it to be. His host 
listened for a considerable while in silence, but 
at last he was obliged to call upon his penitent 
to stop. “ To tell you the truth, Mr. What’s-a- 
name,’^ he cried, “ I do not believe a single word 
you are telling me. However, I am satisfied 
that in you I have discovered, as I have every 
reason to hope, one of the most preposterous 
liars I have for a long time fell in with. Indeed, 
I protest that any one who can with so steady 
a countenance lie so tremendously as you have 
just done may be capable, if not of a great crime, 
at least of no inconsiderable deceit, and perhaps 
of treachery. If this be so, you will suit my 
purposes very well, though I would rather have 
had you an escaped criminal or a murderer or a 
thief.’^ 

“Sir,” said Dunburne, very seriously, “I am 
sorry that I am not more to your mind. As 
you say, I can, I find, lie very easily, and if you 
will give me sufficient time, I dare say I can 
become sufficiently expert in other and more 
criminal matters to please even your fancy. 
I cannot, I fear, commit a murder, nor would I 
227 


STOLEN TREASURE 


choose to embark upon an attempt at arson; 
but I could easily learn to cheat at cards; or I 
could, if it would please you better, make shift 
to forge your own name to a bill for a hundred 
pounds. I confess, however, I am entirely in 
the dark as to why you choose to have me en- 
joy so evil a reputation.” 

At these words the other burst into a great 
and vociferous laugh. “I protest,” he cried, 
“you are the coolest rascal ever I fell in with. 
But come,” he added, sobering suddenly, 
“what did you say was your name?” 

“I declare, sir,” said Dunburne, with the 
most ingenuous frankness, “ I have clean forgot. 
Was it Tom or John Robinson?” 

Again the other burst out laughing. “ Well , ” 
he said, “what does it matter? Thomas or 
John — Tis all one. I see that you are a 
ragged, lousy beggar, and I believe you to 
be a runaway servant. Even if that is the 
worst to be said of you, you will suit me 
very well. As for a name, I myself will fit 
you with one, and it shall be of the best. I 
will give you a home here in the house, and 
will for three months clothe you like a lord. 
You shall live upon the best, and shall meet 
228 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


plenty of the genteelest company the Colonies 
can afford. All that I demand of you is that 
you shall do exactly as I tell you for the three 
months that I so entertain you. Come. Is it 
a bargain 

Dunburne sat for a while thinking very 
seriously. “First of all,” said he, “I must 
know what is the name you have a mind to 
bestow upon me.” 

The other looked distrustfully at him for a 
time, and then, as though suddenly fetching up 
resolution, he cried out: “Well, what then.^^ 
What of it? Why should I be afraid? I’ll 
tell you. Your name shall be Frederick Dun- 
burne, and you shall be the second son of the 
Earl of Clandennie.” 

Had a thunder-bolt fallen from heaven at 
Dunburne’s feet he could not have been struck 
more entirely dumb than he was at those as- 
tounding words. He knew not for the moment 
where to look or what to think. At that instant 
the negro man came into the room, fetching the 
bottle of rum and the bread and cheese he had 
been sent for. As the sound of his entrance 
struck upon our young gentleman’s senses he 
came to himself with the shock, and suddenly 
229 


STOLEN TREASURE 


exploded into a burst of laughter so shrill and 
discordant that Captain Obadiah sat staring at 
him as though he believed his ragged beneficiary 
had gone clean out of his senses. 


IV 

A ROMANTIC EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A YOUNG LADY 

Miss Belinda Belford, the daughter and only 
child of Colonel William Belford, was a young 
lady possessed of no small pretensions to per- 
sonal charms of the most exalted order. Indeed, 
many excellent judges in such matters regarded 
her, without doubt, as the reigning belle of the 
Northern Colonies. Of a medium height, of a 
slight but generously rounded figure, she bore 
herself with an indescribable grace and dignity of 
carriage. Her hair, which was occasionally per- 
mitted to curl in ringlets upon her snowy neck, 
was of a brown so dark and so soft as at times 
to deceive the admiring observer into a belief 
that it was black. Her eyes, likewise of a dark- 
brown color, were of a most melting and liquid 
lustre; her nose, though slight, was sufficiently 
high, and modelled with so exquisite a delicacy 
230 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


as to lend an exceeding charm to her whole 
countenance. She was easily the belle of every 
assembly which she graced with her presence, 
and her name was the toast of every garrison 
town of the Northern provinces. 

Madam Belford and her lovely daughter were 
engaged one pleasant morning in entertaining a 
number of friends, in the genteel English man- 
ner, with a dish of tea and a bit of gossip. Upon 
this charming company Colonel Belford sud- 
denly intruded, his countenance displaying an 
excessive though not displeasing agitation. 

“My dear! my dear!” he cried, “what a piece 
of news have I for you 1 It is incredible and past 
all belief! Who, ladies, do you suppose is here 
in New Hope? Nay, you cannot guess; I shall 
have to enlighten you. Tis none other than 
Frederick Dunburne, my lordship’s second son. 
Yes, you may well look amazed. I saw and 
spoke with him this very morning, and that not 
above a half-hour ago. He is travelling in- 
cognito, but my brother Obadiah discovered his 
identity, and is now entertaining him at his 
new house upon the Point. A large party of 
young officers from the garrison are there, all 
very gay with cards and dice, I am told. My 
231 


STOLEN TREASURE 


noble young gentleman knew me so soon as he 
clapped eyes upon me. ‘This/ says he, ‘if 
I am not mistook, must be Colonel Belford, my 
father’s honored friend. ’ He is, ’ ’ exclaimed the 
speaker, “a most interesting and ingenuous 
youth, with extremely lively and elegant man- 
ners, and a person exactly resembling that of 
his dear and honored father.” 

It may be supposed into what a flutter this 
piece of news cast those who heard it. “My 
dear,” cried Madam Belford, as soon as the first 
extravagance of the general surprise had passed 
by to an easier acceptance of Colonel Belford’s 
tidings — “my dear, why did you not bring him 
with you to present him to us all? What an 
opportunity have you lost!” 

“Indeed, my dear,” said Colonel Belford, “I 
did not forget to invite him hither. He pro- 
tested that nothing could afford him greater 
pleasure, did he not have an engagement with 
some young gentlemen from the garrison. But, 
believe me, I would not let him go without 
a promise. He is to dine with us to-morrow at 
two; and, Belinda, my dear” — here Colonel 
Belford pinched his daughter’s blushing cheek — 
“you must assume your best appearance for so 
232 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


serious an occasion. I am informed that my 
noble gentleman is extremely particular in his 
tastes in the matter of female excellence.’* 

“Indeed, papa,” cried the young lady, with 
great vivacity, “I shall attempt no extraor- 
dinary graces upon my young gentleman’s ac- 
count, and that I promise you. I protest,” she 
exclaimed, with spirit, “ I have no great opinion 
of him who would come thus to New Hope with- 
out a single word to you, who are his father’s 
confidential correspondent. Nor do I admire 
the taste of one who would choose to cast him- 
self upon the hospitality of my uncle Obadiah 
rather than upon yours.” 

“My dear,” said Colonel Belford, very sober- 
ly, “you express your opinion with a most un- 
warranted levity, considering the exalted posi- 
tion your subject occupies. I may, however* 
explain to you that he came to America quite 
unexpectedly and by an accident. Nor would 
he have declared his incognito, had not my 
brother Obadiah discovered it almost immediate- 
ly upon his arrival. He would not, he declared, 
have visited New Hope at all, had not Captain 
Obadiah Belford urged his hospitality in such 
a manner as to preclude all denial,” 

233 


STOLEN TREASURE 


But to this reproof Miss Belinda who, was, 
indeed, greatly indulged by her parents, made 
no other reply than to toss her head with a 
pretty sauciness, and to pout her cherry lips in 
an infinitely becoming manner. 

But though our young lady protested so em- 
phatically against assuming any unusual charms 
for the entertainment of their expected visitor, 
she none the less devoted no small consideration 
to that very thing that she had so exclaimed 
against. Accordingly, when she was presented 
to her father’s noble guest, what with her 
heightened color and her eyes sparkling with 
the emotions evoked by the occasion, she so 
impressed our young gentleman that he could 
do little but stand regarding her with an as- 
tonishment that for the moment caused him to 
forget those graces of deportment that the 
demands of elegance called upon him to as- 
sume. 

Hovrever, he recovered himself immediately, 
and proceeded to take such advantage of his 
introduction that by the time they were seated 
at the dinner-table he found himself conversing 
with his fair partner with all the ease and 
vivacity imaginable. Nor in this exchange of 
234 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


polite raillery did he discover her wit to be in 
any degree less than her personal charms. 

“Indeed, madam,” he exclaimed, “I am 
now more than ready to thank that happy 
accident that has transported me, however 
much against my will, from England to Amer- 
ica. The scenery, how beautiful 1 Nature, how 
fertile! Woman, how exquisite! Your coun- 
try,” he exclaimed, with enthusiasm, “is like 
heaven!” 

“ Indeed, sir,” cried the young lady, vivacious- 
ly, “I do not take your praise for a compli- 
ment. I protest I am acquainted with no 
yoimg gentleman who would not defer his en- 
joyment of heaven to the very last extrem- 
ity.” 

“To be sure,” quoth our hero, “an ambition 
for the abode of saints is of too extreme a 
nature to recommend itself to a modest young 
fellow of parts. But when one finds himself 
thrown into the society of an houri — ” 

“ And do you indeed have houris in England ?” 
exclaimed the young lady. “In America you 
must be content with society of a much more 
earthly constitution 1 ’ ’ 

“Upon my word, miss,” cried our young 

235 


STOLEN TREASURE 


gentleman, “you compel me to confess that I 
find myself in the society of one vastly more to 
my inclination than that of any houri of my 
acquaintance.’' 

With such lively badinage, occasionally laps- 
ing into more serious discourse, the dinner passed 
off with a great deal of pleasantness to our 
young gentleman, who had prepared himself for 
something prodigiously dull and heavy. After 
the repast, a pipe of tobacco in the summer- 
house and a walk in the garden so far completed 
his cheerful impressions that when he rode 
away towards Pig and Sow Point he found him- 
self accompanied by the most lively, agreeable 
thoughts imaginable. Her wit, how subtle! 
Her person, how beautiful 1 He surprised him- 
self smiling with a fatuous indulgence of his 
enjoyable fancies. 

Nor did the young lady’s thoughts, though 
doubtless of a more moderate sort, assume a 
less pleasing perspective. Our young gentle- 
man was favored with a tall, erect figure, a high 
nose, and a fine, thin face expressive of excellent 
breeding. It seemed to her that his manners 
possessed an elegance and a grace that she had 
never before discovered beyond the leaves of 
236 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


Mr. Richardson’s ingenious novels. Nor was 
she unaware of the admiration of herself that 
his countenance had expressed. Upon so slen- 
der a foundation she amused herself for above 
an hour, erecting such castles in the air that, 
had any one discovered her thought, she would 
have perished of mortification. 

But though our young lady so yielded herself 
to the enjoyment of such silly dreams as might 
occur to any miss of a lively imagination and 
vivacious temperament, the reader is to under- 
stand that she had yet so much dignity and 
spirit as to cover these foolish and romantic 
fancies with a cloak of so delicate and so subtle 
a reserve that when the young gentleman called 
to pay his respects the next afternoon he quitted 
her presence ten times more infatuated with 
her charms than he had been the day before. 

Nor can it be denied that our young lady 
knew perfectly well how to make the greatest use 
of such opportunities. She already possessed 
a great deal of experience in teasing the other 
sex with those delicious though innocent tor- 
ments that cause the eyes of the victim to re- 
main awake at night and the fancy to dream 
throughout the day. 


237 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Such presently became the condition of our 
young gentleman that at the end of the month 
he knew not whether his present life had con- 
tinued for weeks or for years; in the charming 
infatuation that overpowered him he considered 
nothing of time, every other consideration being 
engulfed in his desire for the society of his 
charmer. Cards and dice lost for him their 
accustomed pleasure, and when a gay society 
would be at Belford’s Palace it was with the 
utmost difficulty that he assumed so much 
patience as to take his part in those dissipations 
that there obtained. Relieved from them, he 
flew with redoubled ardor back to the gratifica- 
tion of his passion again. 

In the mean time Captain Obadiah had be- 
come so accustomed to the presence of his guest 
that he made no pretence of any concealment of 
that iniquitous, dreadful avocation that lent 
to Pig and Sow Point so great a terror in those 
parts. Rather did the West Indian appear to 
court the open observation of his dependant. 

One exquisite day in the last of October our 
young gentleman had spent the greater part of 
the afternoon in the society of the beautiful 
object of his regard. The leaves, though fallen 
238 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


from the trees in great abundance, appeared 
thereby only to have admitted of the passage of 
a riper radiance of golden sunlight through the 
thinning branches. This and the ardor of his 
passion had so transported our hero that when 
he had departed from her presence he seemed 
to walk as light as a feather, and knew not 
whether it was the warmth of the sunlight or the 
heat of his own impetuous transports that filled 
the universe with so extreme a brightness. 

Overpowered with these absorbing and tran- 
scendent introspections, he approached his now 
odious home upon Pig and Sow Point by way 
of the old meeting-house. There of a sudden 
he came upon his patron, Captain Obadiah, 
superintending the burial of the last of three 
victims of his odious commerce, who had died 
that afternoon. Two had already been in- 
terred, and the third new-made grave was in 
the process of being filled. Two men, one a 
negro and the other a white, had nearly com- 
pleted their labor, tramping down the crum- 
bling earth as they shovelled it into the shallow 
excavation. Meanwhile Captain Obadiah stood 
near by, his red coat flaming in the slanting 
light, himself smoking a pipe of tobacco with 
239 


STOLEN TREASURE 


all the ease and coolness imaginable. His 
hands, clasped behind his back, held his ivory- 
headed cane, and as our hero approached he 
turned an evil countenance upon him, and 
greeted him with a grin at once droll, mis- 
chievous, and malevolent in the extreme. “ And 
how is our pretty charmer this afternoon?’^ 
quoth Captain Obadiah. 

Conceive, if you please, of a man floating in 
the most ecstatic delight of heaven pulled sud- 
denly thence down into the most filthy ex- 
tremity of hell, and then you shall understand 
the motions of disgust and repugnance and 
loathing that overpowered our hero, who, 
awakening thus suddenly out of his dream of 
love, found himself in the presence of that grim 
and obscene spectacle of death — who, arousing 
from such absorbing and exquisite meditations, 
heard his ears greeted with so rude and vulgar 
an address. 

Acknowledging to himself that he did not 
dare offer an immediate reply to his host, he 
turned upon his heel and walked away, without 
expressing a single word. 

He was not, however, permitted to escape 
thus easily. He had not taken above twenty 
240 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


steps, when, hearing footsteps behind him, he 
turned his head to discover Captain Obadiah 
skipping rapidly after him in a prodigious hur- 
ry, swinging his cane and chuckling preposter- 
ously to himself, as though in the enjoyment of 
some most exquisite piece of drollery. ‘ ‘ What 1 ’ * 
he cried, as soon as he could catch his breath 
from his hurry. “What! What! Can’t you 
answer, you villain? Why, blind my eyes! a 
body would think you were a lord’s son indeed, 
instead of being, as I know you, a beggarly run- 
away servant whom I took in like a mangy 
cat out of the rain. But come, come — no of- 
fence, my boy! I’ll be no hard master to you. 
I’ve heard how the wind blows, and I’ve kept 
my ears open to all your doings. I know who 
is your sweetheart. Harkee, you rascal! You 
have a fancy for my niece, have you? Well, 
your apple is ripe if you choose to pick it. 
Marry your charmer and be damned; and if 
you’ll serve me by taking her thus in hand. I’ll 
pay you twenty pounds upon your wedding- 
day. Now what do you say to that, you lousy 
beggar in borrowed clothes?” 

■Our young gentleman stopped short and 
looked his tormentor full in the face. The 

i6 


241 


STOLEN TREASURE 


thought of his father’s anger alone had saved 
him from entangling himself in the web of his 
passions ; this he forgot upon the instant. 
“Captain Obadiah Belford,” quoth he, “you’re 
the most consummate villain ever I beheld in 
all of my life; but if I have the good-fortune 
to please the young lady, I wish I may die if 
I don’t serve you in this!” 

At these words Captain Obadiah, who ap- 
peared to take no offence at his guest’s opinion 
of his honesty, burst out into a great boister- 
ous laugh, flinging back his head and dropping 
his lower jaw so preposterously that the setting 
sun shone straight down his wide and cav- 
ernous gullet. 


V 

HOW THE DEVIL WAS CAST OUT OF THE MEETING- 
HOUSE 

The news that the Honorable Frederick Dun- 
burne, second son of the Earl of Clandennie, was 
to marry Miss Belinda Belford, the daughter 
and only child of Colonel William Belford, of 
New Hope, was of a sort to arouse the keenest 
242 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


and most lively interest in all those parts of the 
Northern Colonies of America. 

The day had been fixed, and all the circum- 
stances arranged with such particularity that 
an invitation was regarded as the highest honor 
that could befall the fortunate recipient. There 
were to be present on this interesting occasion 
two Colonial governors and their ladies, an 
English general, the captain of the flag-ship 
Achilles, and above a score of Colonial magnates 
and ladies of distinction. 

Captain Obadiah had not been bidden to 
either the ceremony or the breakfast. This 
rebuff he had accepted with prodigious amuse- 
ment, which, not limiting itself to the immediate 
occasion, broke forth at intervals for above two 
weeks. Now it might express itself in chuckles 
of the most delicious entertainment, vented as 
our Captain walked up and down the hall of his 
great house, smoking his pipe and cracking the 
knuckles of his fingers; at other times he would 
burst forth into incontrollable fits of laughter 
at the extravagant deceit which he believed 
himself to be imposing upon his brother. Colonel 
Belford. 

At length came the wedding-day, with such 
243 


STOLEN TREASURE 


circumstances of pomp and display as the ex- 
ceeding wealth and Colonial dignity of Colonel 
Belford could surround it. For the wedding- 
breakfast the great folding-doors between the 
drawing-room and the dining-room of Colonel 
Belford’s house were flung wide open, and a 
table extending the whole length of the two 
apartments was set with the most sumptuous 
and exquisite display of plate and china. 
Around the board were collected the distinguish- 
ed company, and the occasion was remarkable 
not less for the richness of its display than for 
the exquisite nature of the repast intended to 
celebrate so auspicious an occasion. 

At the head of the board sat the young couple, 
radiant with an engrossing happiness that took 
no thought of what the future might have in 
store for it, but w’as contented with the trium- 
phant ecstasy of the moment. 

These elegant festivities were at their height, 
when there suddenly arose a considerable dis- 
putation in the hallway beyond, and before any 
one could inquire as to what was occurring. 
Captain Obadiah Belford came stumping into 
the room, swinging his ivory-headed cane, and 
with an expression of the most malicious tri- 
244 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


umph impressed upon his countenance. Direct- 
ing his address to the bridegroom, and paying 
no attention to any other one of the company, 
he cried out: “Though not bidden to this en- 
tertainment, I have come to pay you a debt 
I owe. Here is twenty pounds I promised to 
pay you for marrying my niece.” 

Therewith he drew a silk purse full of gold 
pieces from his pocket, which he hung over the 
ferrule of his cane and reached across the table 
to the bridegroom. That gentleman, upon his 
part (having expected some such episode as this), 
arose, and with a most polite and elaborate bow 
accepted the same and thrust it into his pocket. 

“And now, my young gentleman,” cried 
Captain Obadiah, folding his arms and tucking 
his cane under his armpit, looking the while 
from under his brows upon the company with 
a most malevolent and extravagant grin — 
“and now, my young gentleman, perhaps you 
will favor the ladies and gentlemen here present 
with an account of what services they are I thus 
pay for.” 

“To be sure I will,” cried out our hero, “and 
that with the utmost willingness in the world.” 

During all this while the elegant company had 
245 


STOLEN TREASURE 


sat as with suspended animation, overwhelmed 
with wonder at the singular address of the in- 
truder. Even the servants stood still with the 
dishes in their hands the better to hear the out- 
come of the affair. The bride, overwhelmed 
by a sudden and inexplicable anxiety, felt the 
color quit her face, and reaching out, seized her 
lover’s hand, who took hers very readily, hold- 
ing it tight within his grasp. As for Colonel and 
Madam Belford, not knowing what this re- 
markable address portended, they sat as though 
turned to stone, the one gone as white as ashes, 
and the other as red in the face as a cherry. 
Our young gentleman, however, maintained the 
utmost coolness and composure of demeanor. 
Pointing his finger towards the intruder, he ex- 
claimed: “In Captain Obadiah Belford, ladies 
and gentlemen, you behold the most unmitigated 
villain that ever I met in all of my life. With 
an incredible spite and vindictiveness he not 
only pursued my honored father-in-law. Colonel 
Belford, but has sought to wreak an unwar- 
ranted revenge upon the innocent and virtuous 
young lady whom I have now the honor to call 
my wife. But how has he overreached himself 
in his machinations! How has he entangled his 


246 





THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


feet in the net which he himself has spread! I 
will tell you my history, as he bids me to do, 
and you may then judge for yourselves!” 

At this unexpected address Captain Oba- 
diah’s face fell from its expression of malicious 
triumph, growing longer and longer, until at 
last it was overclouded with so much doubt 
and anxiety that, had he been threatened by the 
loss of a thousand pounds, he could not have 
assumed a greater appearance of mortification 
and dejecton. Meantime, regarding him with 
a mischievous smile, our young gentleman be- 
gan the history of all those adventures that 
had befallen him from the time he embarked 
upon the memorable expedition with his two 
companions in dissipation from York Stairs. 
As his account proceeded Captain Obadiah’s 
face altered by degrees from its natural brown 
to a sickly yellow, and then to so leaden a hue 
that it could not have assumed a more ghastly 
appearance were he about to swoon dead away. 
Great beads of sweat gathered upon his fore- 
head and trickled down his cheeks. At last he 
could endure no more, but with a great and 
strident voice, such as might burst forth from 
a devil tormented, he cried out: “ ’Tis a lie! 

247 


STOLEN TREASURE 


Tis all a monstrous lie! He is a beggarly run- 
away servant whom I took in out of the rain 
and fed and housed — to have him turn thus 
against me and strike the hand that has bene- 
fited him!’' 

“Sir,” replied our young gentleman, with a 
moderate and easy voice, “what I tell you is no 
lie, but the truth. If any here misdoubts my 
veracity, see, here is a letter received by the 
last packet from my honored father. You, 
Colonel Belford, know his handwriting perfectly 
well. Look at this and tell me if I am deceiving 
you.” 

At these words Colonel Belford took the letter 
with a hand that trembled as though with 
palsy. He cast his eyes over it, but it is to be 
doubted whether he read a single word therein 
contained. Nevertheless, he saw enough to 
satisfy his doubts, and he could have wept, so 
great was the relief from the miserable and 
overwhelming anxiety that had taken posses- 
sion of him since the beginning of his brother’s 
discourse. 

Meantime our young gentleman, turning to 
Captain Obadiah, cried out, “Sir, I am indeed 
an instrument of Providence sent hither to call 
248 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


your wickedness to account,’’ and this he spoke 
with so virtuous an air as to command the ad- 
miration of all who heard him. “I have,” he 
continued, “ lived with you now for nearly three 
odious months, and I know every particular 
of your habits and such circumstances of your 
life as you are aware of. I now proclaim how 
you have wickedly and sacrilegiously turned the 
Old Free Grace Meeting-House into a slave-pen, 
whence for above a year you have conducted 
a nefarious and most inhuman commerce with 
the West Indies.” 

At these words Captain Obadiah, being thrown 
so suddenly upon his defence, forced himself to 
give forth a huge and boisterous laugh. “ What 
then?” he cried. “What wickedness is there 
in that ? What if I have provided a few sugar 
plantations with negro slaves? Are there not 
those here present who would do no better if 
the opportunity offered? The place is mine, 
and I break no law by a bit of quiet slave- 
trading.” 

“I marvel,” cried our young gentleman, 
still in the same virtuous strain— “I marvel 
that you can pass over so wicked a thing thus 
easily. I myself have counted above fifty 
249 


STOLEN TREASURE 


graves of your victims on Pig and Sow Point. 
Repent, sir, while there is yet time.'' 

But to this adjuration Captain Obadiah re- 
turned no other reply than to burst into a most 
wicked, impudent laugh. 

“ Is it so ?" cried our young gentleman. Do 
you dare me to further exposures? Then I 
have here another evidence to confront you 
that may move you to a more serious con- 
sideration." With these words he drew forth 
from his pocket a packet wrapped in soft white 
paper. This he unfolded, holding up to the 
gaze of all a bright and shining object. “ This," 
he exclaimed, “ I found in Captain Obadiah 's 
writing-desk while I was hunting for some wax 
with which to seal a letter." It was the gold 
snuffbox of the late Collector Goodhouse. 
“What,” he cried, “have you, sir, to offer in 
explanation of the manner in which this came 
into your possession ? See, here engraved upon 
the lid is the owner’s name and the circum- 
stance of his having saved my own poor life. 
It was that first called my attention to it, for 
I well recollect how my father compelled me to 
present it to my savior. How came it into your 
possession, and why have you hidden it away 
250 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


so carefully for all this while ? Sir, in the death 
of Lieutenant Goodhouse I suspect you of a 
more sinister fault than that of converting 
yonder poor sanctuary into a slave-pen. So 
soon as Captain Morris of your slave-ship re- 
turns from Jamaica I shall have him arrested, 
and shall compel him to explain what he knows 
of the circumstances of the Lieutenant’s un- 
fortunate murder.” 

At the sight of so unexpected an object in the 
young gentleman’s hand Captain Obadiah’s jaw 
fell, and his cavernous mouth gaped as though 
he had suddenly been stricken with a palsy. 
He lifted a trembling hand and slowly and 
mechanically passed it along that cheek which 
was so discolored with gunpowder stain. Then, 
suddenly gathering himself together and re- 
gaining those powers that appeared for a 
moment to have fled from him, he cried out, 
aloud: “I swear to God ’twas all an accident! 
I pushed him down the steps, and he fell and 
broke his neck!” 

Our young gentleman regarded him with a 
cold and collected smile. “That, sir,” said 
he, “ you shall have the opportunity to explain 
to the proper authorities — unless,” he added, 

251 


STOLEN TREASURE 


“you choose to take yourself away from these 
parts, and to escape the just resentment of 
those laws to which you may be responsible 
for your misdemeanors/^ 

“I shall,” roared Captain Obadiah, “stand 
my trial in spite of you all! I shall live to see 
you in torments yet! I shall — ” He gaped 
and stuttered, but could find no further words 
with which to convey his infinite rage and dis- 
appointed spite. Then turning, and with a 
furious gesture, he rushed forth and out of the 
house, thrusting those aside who stood in his 
way, and leaving behind him a string of curses 
fit to set the whole world into a blaze. 

He had destroyed all the gayety of the wed- 
ding-breakfast, but the relief from the pro- 
digious doubts and anxieties that had at first 
overwhelmed those whom he had intended to 
ruin was of so great a nature that they thought 
nothing of so inconsiderable a circumstance. 

As for our young gentleman, he had come 
forth from the adventure with such dignity of 
deportment and with so exalted an air of 
generous rectitude that those present could not 
sufficiently admire at the continent discretion of 
one so young. The young lady whom he had 
252 


THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE 


married, if she had before regarded him as a 
Paris and an Achilles incorporated into one 
person, now added the wisdom of a Nestor to 
the category of his accomplishments. 

Captain Obadiah, in spite of the defiance he 
had fulminated against his enemies, and in 
spite of the determination he had expressed to 
remain and to stand his trial, was within a 
few days known to have suddenly and mys- 
teriously departed from New Hope. Whether 
or not he misdoubted his own rectitude too 
greatly to put it to the test of a trial, or whether 
the mortification incident upon the failure of 
his plot was too great for him to support, it 
was clearly his purpose never to return again. 
For within a month the more valuable of his 
belongings were removed from his great house 
upon Pig and Sow Point and were loaded upon 
a bark that came into the harbor for that pur- 
pose. Thence they were transported no one 
knew whither, for Captain Obadiah was never 
afterwards observed in those parts. 

Nor was the old meeting-house ever again 
disturbed by such manifestations as had terri- 
fied the community for so long a time. Never- 
theless, though the Devil was thus exorcised 
253 


STOLEN TREASURE 


from his abiding-place, the old church never 
lost its evil reputation, until it was finally 
destroyed by fire about ten years after the 
incidents herein narrated. 

In conclusion it is only necessary to say that 
when the Honorable Frederick Dunbume pre- 
sented his wife to his noble family at home, he 
was easily forgiven his misalliance in view of 
her extreme beauty and vivacity. Within a 
year or two Lord Carrickford, his elder brother, 
died of excessive dissipation in Florence, where 
he was then attached to the English Embassy, 
so that our young gentleman thus became the 
heir-apparent to his father’s title, and so both 
branches of the family were united into one. 


THE END 


























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